To Stay Where You Are
by Speaker for the Dead aka 17
Summary: Voyager encounters their mirror universe counterparts, led by Intendant Janeway. Not in white this time (dang, I hate my browser... the words of my other fics were actually dark green!!!!!)
1. Chapter 1

To Stay Where You Are (Part One)  
  
A sillier Fanfic written by Lt Taya 17 Janeway  
  
  
Space was a beautiful thing, silent and sparkling. A clean void brimming with life and energy, somehow magical, somewhat paradoxical, it had served as the stuff dreams were made out of for many men of Earth over the hard, bitter centuries.  
  
For some, however, those dreams turn darker than they'd like it to.  
  
The pristine silence of space was abruptly torn apart as a primal scream in the form of a spasming tear in its fabric blossomed in the spaces between the stars. A small battered craft belonging to one of those unfortunate souls burst from it at maximum speed. Rabbit-like, it scooted behind the protection of the nearest asteroid chunk.  
  
Then the wolf came tearing out of the portal like an avenging marauder, and the battle was rejoined. The pursuer was a sleek, massive raptor, designed for speed and power and battles and little else. She fired a spread of torpedoes at the asteroid chunk, trying to flush her prey out of hiding.  
  
The tactic worked. The small craft ventured out and futilely returned a few shots, trying to retreat to further safety within the asteroid belt.  
  
It was a lost cause. The powerful warship strafed it with a deadly array of phasers, pummeling it with more energy than it's shields could withstand. The shields flickered weakly once before going out.  
  
Without shields, drained of armaments, the small craft banked downwards desperately, trying to shake off its gargantuan attacker. Moving into a series of deft maneuvers, it tried making itself too hard a target to hit.  
  
It worked for a while, but the warship had the advantage of speed and firepower. A single shot from one of its furious volleys was all it took to disable the small craft's sublight engines.  
  
Immobilized and drained of energy, the craft was helpless as a green tractor beam swept over its scorched hull and began drawing it towards the larger ship. A shimmering cloaking field fell over both ships as they moved deeper into the asteroid belt, and they vanished from view.  
  
On the bridge of the Fleetship Warrior, Intendant Kathryn Janeway smiled sardonically and said, "Welcome back, Commandant Chakotay…"  
  
  
  
The Starship Voyager was in orbit around a gargantuan asteroid, probing deep for subterranean dilithium sources. The ship, in its sixth year of its journey home, was once again in need for new sources of fuel, which although not scarce in the Delta Quadrant, often had to be sought out. Much like mining for gold centuries ago in Earth's past. Or oil prospecting.  
  
In her quarters, Captain Kathryn Janeway was trying to juggle a cup of coffee and a stack of padds in one hand while pushing her chair back with the other. It required a phenomenal amount of concentration and muscular coordination, she noted, as she eased herself between the chair and the table.  
  
The door chose that moment to chime, ruining her concentration and her uniform as hot coffee gushed all over it. Janeway repressed a snort of disgust as she lowered the now mostly-empty cup and dripping padds onto the table. "Come in," she said.  
  
It was none other than Chakotay, as she expected. "Did I catch you at a difficult time?" he asked innocently, as the captain inspected the soggy front of her uniform.  
  
"No, I was just carrying out my daily reminder of how clumsy I am," she remarked dryly, heading to the anteroom to fetch a clean jacket.  
  
Chakotay refrained from further comment but handed her another padd. "The away team debriefing has just finished," he informed her.   
  
Janeway took the padd as she walked back and scanned through it. "Interesting," she muttered. Handing it back to Chakotay she added, "Best piece of news I've heard today,"  
  
Chakotay gave her a funny look. "The away team comes back saying that more comprehensive tests are required to search for the dilithium and that's good news?"  
  
"Compared to Borg sightings, power outages and major disputes amongst the crewmembers, I'd say yes," she replied, gesturing to the padds puddling on her desktop. "Extraordinarily good, as a matter of fact."  
  
Chakotay shook his head and sighed. "Such stressful lives we lead; no respite from the toil and drudgery of the day."  
  
"But yet forward we must head; for the chains of command heavy on us lay." Janeway looked away from the mess of her table to glance at Chakotay. "And since when did you add the works of Joeller Kevrin Neaves to your repertoire?"   
  
"Ever since I discovered that he's the greatest 22nd century writer who ever griped about the frustrations of being in command," he replied. "My favorite piece is Unfulfilled Desires of a Commanding Man," he said in a nostalgic manner. "Have you ever read it before?" he asked his captain, his eyes dancing with mischief.   
  
"If it's the one about the one where the a captain envies the men of soil because they can liaison with who and whom they choose, yes. Wasn't it one of the arguments that led to Starfleet relaxing its rules about allowing families on board starships?"  
  
"I suppose." Chakotay moved towards the observation window and his tone grew mock-wistful. "Don't you sympathize with the sentiments that he expresses? The pull, the urges that you sometimes feel?" He turned back to look at her, and this time there was no mistaking the playful look in his eyes.  
  
Janeway returned the favor with a smirk. "Unfortunately for some, no."  
  
"Really." Chakotay walked behind the chair where Janeway had seated herself and placed his hands on her shoulders. "Well, unfortunately for some, I do."  
  
"Hmpf," said Janeway, pretending to be totally engrossed in a coffee-drenched padd. "And just what are you going to do about it?"  
  
"Well, for a start, I could-"  
  
The beeping of Janeway's commbadge interrupted Chakotay mid-sentence. Janeway made a quick jab at it before Chakotay could get there first. "Janeway here."  
  
"Captain." It was Seven of Nine. "Please report to Astrometrics immediately."  
  
The captain frowned. "I'll be right there. Janeway out."  
  
"How convenient," grumbled Chakotay, surreptitiously moving his hands downwards.  
  
"At least she said 'please'. I guess I'd better get going," Janeway rose and ignored Chakotay's attempts to run his hands down her uniform. "This had better be good."  
  
"More bad news, you think?" asked Chakotay, following her.  
  
"I hope not," she said, heading for the door.  
  
He reached out and grabbed her waist. "We'll continue this later," he said.  
  
"That's what you think," smirked Janeway, extricating herself form his grasp, and heading determinedly for the door.  
  
  
  
"Interesting," muttered Janeway, scanning through the sensor readings in Astrometrics. "The readings are clearly artificial."  
  
Seven nodded in agreement. "They also do not match any known readings stored in the computer databanks."  
  
"Meaning we do not know what we are looking at." Janeway folded her arms and frowned deeply. "Would you like to make a guess about where it comes from?"  
  
Seven brow crinkled slightly. "Since the origin of the energy spikes still continues to evade our sensors, there is a high probability that it may be residual flow from a cloaking field."  
  
"This is what you think." The captain placed her hands on her hips, lost in thought. "And if we have hidden company out there…" She gazed hard at the walls, as if she could see through them and reveal their hidden companions if she tried hard enough. "I want you to inform Lt. Torres about this. See if she can make any more sense out of this." She paused slightly. "And… just in case, tell Cmdr. Tuvok to prepare himself for possible hostile actions."  
  
Seven nodded. "Aye."  
  
Just as the captain was about to leave, Seven turned around and called. "Captain."  
  
Janeway turned to face her. "Is there a problem?"  
  
"No… just a strange thought," replied Seven.  
  
"A hunch?"  
  
"Perhaps." Seven paused hesitantly, and finally said, "Captain… what if whoever or whatever is watching us out there… is someone we know?"  
  
"Someone we know?" The captain frowned. "Someone we have encountered before and is trailing us?"  
  
"That might be a possibility."  
  
"Well…" Janeway regarded her protégé with a strange light. "I suppose… that it would be most intriguing." And with that, she left the room, still humming verses from Neaves' The Hard Life.  
  
  
  
Commandant Chakotay had every reason to be nervous. After all, this was the very woman he'd betrayed more than a month ago. Now that he was back, albeit somewhat unwillingly, in her hands, there was no knowing what'd she'd do. She was dangerous and unpredictable.  
  
Very unpredictable.  
  
Of course, there'd been a time when she'd been different, when Chakotay thought he understood her. When she had been the innocent young thing he'd loved. But that was a long time ago, years before this ship, this struggle, and the hardened bitter woman in front of him had seen too much pain, too much suffering, to be anything like her at all.  
  
The Intendant turned away from the porthole and faced him, steel-blue eyes boring into his. "Welcome back, Commandant," she said, in that low husky voice he'd come to know so well. "I hope you've had a pleasant trip."  
  
The smirk. The characteristic acid sardonism. Nothing about her had changed.  
  
No, he decided. Something had changed. There was something new in her voice- more hurt, more anger. Anger at him. For betraying her. For betraying the cause he was supposed to have stood by for the last twenty years.  
  
Except that he never really believed in it. No, his mind had been somewhere else, focused on another, contradictory goal- one which she fought with every fiber in her body.  
  
Now she knew the truth- that the past twenty years had all been a lie. Chakotay suppressed a shudder. He knew what she did to traitors and their ilk- he'd been there on so many occasions. Not a pretty sight.  
  
"So, tell me, how many of them were there?" Janeway walked towards him. "Ten? Twenty? A hundred?" She lowered her gaze, walking around him. "I know that the five you ran off with you weren't all that there were." She walked behind him, her fingers tracing lightly across his neck, sending a strange tingling sensation down his spine. "I asked all of them, I did. Some of them broke down. Many, in fact." She stopped in front of him "But was that all to it? Just a paltry few out of the hundreds we have?"  
  
Chakotay kept his face and tone as neutral as possible. "Those who stayed were the cowards- you probably found them all."  
  
"Really. But it seems that not all the cowards stayed on board." Her smile grew wolfish, triumphant. "I suppose you'd like to know how we found you."  
  
Chakotay kept his tone hard and bitterly flat. "BE'lanna. I know."  
  
"The ravishing engineer, eh?" she said, her eyes sparkling with malice. "Well, perhaps she wasn't quite so ravishing after all. And I thought you Rebels knew not to trust Klingons. Even halfbred ones." She sneered derisively.  
  
Chakotay said nothing. Well, it'd gone better than he thought it would….  
  
"She's back at work at the engine core now," remarked Janeway. "A real wonder, isn't she? Feeding us coordinates, sending cloaking schematics, luring you into this trap…"  
  
Trap? Chakotay felt momentarily confused. Then he remembered. Of course. The mirror universe device…. his heart gave a strange flutter. He'd be so anxious he'd nearly forgotten the wonder of it – being in an completely different world, where people led different lives in a nearly utopian state. Where he could be happy.  
  
"Yes, didn't you know?" the Intendant smiled at him. "Haven't you ever heard of our sister universe and its miraculous world where humans are not just underdogs, but masters of the galaxy?" She chuckled. "What fairy tales. But, one must admit, their ships hold a great deal of potential, do they not?"  
  
Chakotay only blinked. "What do you want me to do?"  
  
Her smile grew more twisted. "It would be a perfect opportunity, no?" she asked him. "Infiltrating an unsuspecting ship, taking the ground from beneath them before they even know what's happening. But to do so requires a great deal of stealth and trickery. Subterfuge."  
  
Chakotay could see where this was heading. "And no-one on this ship knows about them better than I," he commented wryly.  
  
"Ahh." She gazed at him with satisfaction. "I knew that you would volunteer yourself for this mission."  
  
Chakotay groaned inwardly. He should have seen it coming- he knew her too well. She would devise something-some crafty double-edged plan that would enable her to kill two birds with one stone- to test his loyalties. See if he was ready to be back on her side. But no matter. It could be done… In Chakotay's mind he was already formulating plans on how this would work to their advantage. It was a promising situation. Was she too foolish to trust him this much at this early stage?  
  
"You will leave for the briefing in Room 3.3 now," she archly informed him, "After which you will proceed directly to Transporter Room 4 to depart for your mission."  
  
"Directly afterwards?" repeated Chakotay incredulously. Of course. How could he have been so stupid? She'd definitely make him proceed now so that he wouldn't have time to retreat and think. Regroup and formulate a plan. So maybe she didn't trust him as much as he thought she did. He wanted to hit himself for underestimating her. Nevertheless, not all was lost…. Perhaps he could turn this to his advantage. After all, he was renown for being able to think on his feet.  
  
"Do you have a problem with that?" she asked, slipping an arm around his waist.  
  
"No , ma'am," he replied.  
  
"Good," she said.  
  
  
Co-Secant Tom Paris was not a very impatient man, but there were times he felt that he had been waiting forever and whatever he was waiting for was a long time overdue. And right now, perched in one of the coolant rooms waiting for someone he hadn't seen in more than a month, was one of those times.  
  
Paris held the position of sub-navigator on this hellhole which some considered a starship. Not that it was particularly small or that the amenities were lacking. It was one of the largest and most powerful ships in the Fleet, yet it was also one of the most boring places to be for a human. And the strange thing was, the crew was almost entirely human, except for a couple of so-called superior races pushed on them by the damnable Alliance and its cronies. Hell with it, he thought, if they didn't trust the humans they shouldn't have given them a ship in the first place. It was a stupid move anyway, considering that more than half of the human crew were either already in the resistance movement or about to be in it. It must be some sort of human nature, he mulled, which caused all these people from all over, colonies and everything, to band together and strike out at some oppressive force.  
  
There was slight sound and movement from below, and Paris leaned forward eagerly. Sure enough, here she came. He found it unbelievably ironic that of all people, the Klingon on board their ship was on their side. Gripping the narrow railing carefully, he flipped himself over, using his legs to shift his equilibrium so that he hung upside down from the second level to the first. "Lennie?" he called.  
  
B'Elanna's eyes opened wide. "Atoms?" As Paris did a quick somersault and landed catlike on the floor, she leapt forward and embraced him in a crushing bearhug. "I've missed you!"  
  
Paris chuckled. "Me too. It was hell over here, not knowing where you were, or whether you'd come back…" He sighed as she finally let him go. 'So, how did the plan go?"  
  
The chief engineer grinned at him. "Like clockwork. She fell for it hook, line and sinker. Bait and all."  
  
"That's good news," said Paris, patting her on the back. "Nothing feels like a little good fishing now and then." His tone grew wistful. "You know, when I was a kid, there was this large pond near my house, and every summer, just when the fish were growing fat, we'd go there and spend the whole day trying to lure them into net traps. Those idyllic days, so full of sunlight, youth and the fresh smell of the soil beneath you…. Such wonderful times we had." He glanced at her. "You know, as head engineer, you really should requisition parts for a holodeck. That's what this ship really needs."  
  
"There you go again, asking me to abuse my authority. Still the same old Tom Paris." She put his hand around his waist and led him deeper into the coolant unit room. "Some things never change, do they?"  
  
"Not within a month, that is," remarked Paris. "I guess I'm just pretty much the same," he added coyly, drawing he closer to him.  
  
"Mmmm." Torres leaned over and kissed him gently on his jaw. "And I'd like to find out how much."  
  
Paris said nothing much but returned the favor, pulling her deeper into one of the recesses amongst the massive cooling pipes. "Wait till you hear what the Intendant has been up to…"   
  
  
  
Chakotay and Torres were heading back to their quarters after a late-night shift on the bridge. Right now, Chakotay felt bone tired and all he wanted to do was fall into bed and sleep. It had been a long day.  
  
Torres, on the other, seemed intent on another all-nighter trying to figure out a way to resolve the strange sensor readings they had been getting. "Maybe this can give us a clue as to where in Gre'tHor the dilithium in this rock chunk is," she muttered. "The spectrometer shows that there is definitely a very dense core somewhere inside."  
  
"The captain and I were drawing up possible explanations for these phenomena, and one of the ideas we had was that the dilithium belongs to someone and they're guarding it with this cloaking shield."  
  
"I hope not," snorted Torres. "The ship really needs the dilithium or we're just going to fall out of space halfway through our journey. Besides, Seven ran a analysis of the phase modulations of the energy spikes and concluded that there were more than one source of these energy readings. There's something else out there, and I want to know what the hell that thing is."  
  
Chakotay stopped in front of his quarters. "Well, give me a call when you find out." He stepped into his quarters and called back over his shoulder, "Good luck, by the way."  
  
Torres only grunted.  
  
As the door slid in place behind him, Chakotay heaved a sigh of relief. Now he was alone- away from all these mysteries and frustrations. Alone to his own thoughts.  
  
He took off his jacket and tossed it on his bed. What a day it had been. He stood in front of the mirror and realized that he looked even more worn and tired than he thought he was. Dark eye shadows, haggard look, hair slightly ruffled… and he seemed to have grown a bit of a beard. Strange. Hadn't he just shaved that morning? Unless that was one of the side effects of stress… His train of thought cut off abruptly as he realized that his bureau table was somehow mysteriously missing in the reflection and his office desk was in its place instead.  
  
Suddenly he realized there was something wrong with the mirror.  
  
Then he realized it wasn't a mirror.  
  
With frightening suddenness, his reflection leapt out of the wooden frame and slammed him against the floor. Head ringing, Chakotay lashed out with his fists at his assailant and was rewarded with a vicious blow to his stomach, momentarily knocking the wind out of him. Gasping for breath and still trying to grasp what had happened, Chakotay felt rather than heard the hissing of a hypospray even as he tried to shout and fight back.  
  
The last thing he thought before the world faded into blackness was that at least he'd found what the hell that thing was.  
  
  
  
"Engineer? Engineer!" A vaguely petulant voice echoed down the corridors by the coolant room. "Wherever you are, I am summoning you out! Intendant's orders!"  
  
In the bowels of the coolant unit, Lenn Torres tore herself away from Paris. "Damn!" she muttered. "Annika's looking for me. Must be some stupid haywire fault again. I don't know what all you guys were doing in the month that I was gone, but it looks like I got back none a moment too soon, before the whole ship falls apart."  
  
"Must you go so soon?" asked Paris. "I was just beginning to enjoy myself."  
  
"Well, you know… duty calls." She shrugged. "We can always continue this later."  
  
Science Director Annika Hansen stalked into the cooler room, looking more ruffled than her usual icy self. Torres emerged from the shadows, hoping that her jacket wasn't too rumpled. Annika, as always, was clad in skin-tight, jet-black synth leather from head to toe. She glanced at Torres ruefully. "So there you are, Lenn. I was looking all over for you." She gave Torres' disheveled appearance a disparaging once-over. "What have you been doing all this while, making out in there?"  
  
"Checking the tensile strength of the coolant pipes," Torres remarked vaguely. "What's it this time? Another botched repair job?"  
  
"No." Her ice-blue eyes narrowed considerably. 'We have our first captive on board the ship, currently in the brig. The Intendant wants you to prep the program for the second phase."  
  
"Ahh. Already done. The file's in Sector Two of the databank." Torres shrugged. "Anything else?"  
  
Annika shrugged noncommittally. After one month of separation, the bitter rivalry between the two had changed little. The only change it had taken was a turn for the worse, because Annika now saw Torres both as a traitor and a competitor for the ship's helmsman. Annika might be the Intendant's darling little pet, the shameless vixen that she was, but Torres had her man and she wasn't about to let him go. She'd never cared much for supercilious human jerks and she never would.  
  
"I find your behavior extremely annoying," Torres had told her once.  
  
"Sucks to be you," she'd replied. "That isn't my problem."  
  
Torres crossed her arms. "Are you going to get lost, or do I have to throw you out of here?"  
  
Annika glared at her with thinly veiled contempt and replied, "How very courteous of you."  
  
"Thank you. I'll take that as a compliment," snapped Torres. "Now leave."  
  
Her dignity offended, Annika stormed out of the cooler room- no doubt to report it back to the Intendant. No matter, thought Torres. Soon it would be all over. And it just served as another reminder as to why she'd joined this mostly lost cause in the first place.  
  
  
  
It was early in the morning, 0600 hours ship time. The EMH was tending to a patient in sickbay when the doors swished open, admitting Commander Chakotay. Neelix, who had gotten up early on the pretext of delivering breakfast to one of the crewmembers who'd been injured in a recent away mission, waved enthusiastically to him. "Good morning, Commander! It's nice to see you up so early. Are you here for one of those annual medical exams?"  
  
Chakotay blinked and stared at Neelix, momentarily confused. After a pause, he shrugged. "Well… but of course." He glanced around sickbay. "Listen, Mr…. um… never mind." He scratched his head. "Would you mind leaving for a little while? I'd like to talk to the doctor in private." Looking at the trays of food that Neelix was pushing, he decided to take a risk. "Fetch me a cup of coffee, or something."  
  
Neelix perked up. "A cup of coffee? Absolutely! I'll have one brewing right away." With that he cheerfully made his way out of sickbay.   
  
Chakotay prayed that coffee makers took as long to make a cup of coffee in this universe as it did anywhere else. He searched for the nearest computer terminal and started towards it, trying to refresh his memory on how it worked. Smiley had shown him the LCARS workings a few weeks back, but he'd never really gotten the hang of it.  
  
He pressed the first few controls and waited with bated breath. A small slot opened in the crevice beside the console, and he retrieved the isolinear chip from his belt and slotted it in. With a whirring of servos, the computer accepted it. So far, so good.  
  
The EMH came sauntering up to Chakotay. "Pretty busy this morning, aren't we?" he asked.  
  
"Good morning, doctor," said Chakotay, keying in commands as fast as he could.  
  
"And just what are you doing?"  
  
"Oh… nothing. Just a few improvements here and there… on Janeway's orders." Chakotay completed the last set of instructions and paused slightly to admire his handiwork.  
  
"Let me see just what those 'improvements' are," said the doctor, trying to push Chakotay aside and look at the console.  
  
Chakotay pushed him back.  
  
The doctor immediately tried to pin Chakotay's arms to the side of the bed-  
  
Chakotay kicked at the doctor only to find out that he was not there-  
  
The doctor lunged out and tried to hit the abort command-  
  
And in a last minute desperate move Chakotay knocked a tricorder off the nearest equipment tray onto the console-  
  
And the EMH disappeared, only to be replaced by his spitting image. Just with a few modifications added. He released Chakotay's arm. "Sorry," he said.  
  
"Never mind," replied Chakotay. "Just carry on as usual- you know what to do. She'll expect some sort of report soon, so try to give her as little information as possible. I need time to work."  
  
The neo-EMH nodded. 'I'll be careful. They won't notice a thing." From the opposite side of sickbay came the sounds of one of the patients waking up. "Well, back to work, I guess."  
  
Neelix chose that moment to barge in with a large steaming pot. "You coffee, Commander?"  
  
"It's alright, my business here is over," replied Chakotay. But seeing the crestfallen look on Neelix's face, he changed his mind. "On the other hand, I think I'll take it back to my cabin."  
  
"Why not the mess hall, sir?" suggested Neelix cheerfully. "The captain's having breakfast."  
  
The captain… well, it had to come sometime. "Very well, then." said Chakotay, and he followed Neelix, fascinated, to the mess hall.  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

To Stay Where You Are (Part 2)  
  
A sillier Fanfic written by TaTTooGaL™  
  
Commander Chakotay awoke with a start. His bed felt wrong…. his quarters looked wrong… what in the world had happened?  
  
The it all came rushing back to him in an instant. The attack- he hadn't dreamt that, had he? He'd been attacked by an exact duplicate of himself. Most intriguing. Chakotay stood and examined his surroundings. He was in a spare metal room- three gunmetal gray walls, flat burnished ceiling and floor, a bed, lavatory cubicle in the corner, one flickering blue force-field which served as the fourth wall. Beyond that was another blank gray wall. Some sort of holding cell, he surmised. The question was, who brought him here, and why?  
  
Suddenly a black leather-clad apparition appeared in front of the cell. "The Intendant wishes to see you," she said haughtily.  
  
Something in the voice… Chakotay strained to see through the force field. "Seven of Nine?" He asked cautiously.   
  
She reacted as it she'd been struck. "What did you say?"  
  
"You're not Seven?" he asked, feeling more and more detached from reality every second.  
  
"No," she snapped, "I am Science Director Annika Hansen, and if I ever hear you call me by that… aberration again, I'll personally break your neck."  
  
Annika… so she was Seven after all. In a sense. Chakotay's mind reeled… trying to take in the possibilities. For one thing, he now reaffirmed that this was indeed, probably the source of the odd energy readings. So what could this be? A parallel reality? He decided to take that into his stride. After all stranger things had happened before, like the time the ship got duplicated...   
  
The force field snapped off, and Chakotay saw that Sev- no, Annika- was armed with a fairly large phaser rifle. She gestured with it, indicating that he should step out of the cell.  
  
As Annika marched him down the corridor past rows and rows of cells-some empty, some not-, he tried to recall everything he'd ever learnt about parallel universes. One of his Maquis friends had told him something about it once… something about jumping realities… about this Klingon-what was his name, Worf?- or something like that. And Kirk had encountered some kind of mirror universe on the original Enterprise, hadn't he? He tried to fit it all in. So he was on an alternate Voyager, being panhandled by an alternate, unassimilated Seven of Nine, being taken to see… who? The Indentant, she'd said. An alternate Janeway? And even so, what did they want with him? And where was his alternate self, wreaking havoc in his place? The thought worried Chakotay extremely.   
  
Well, that just meant that the Intendant was going to have a heck of a lot of questions to answer.  
  
  
  
The mess hall of Voyager was a clean burnished gray, neither overly cushy nor totally utilarian. It was a place where crewmembers could meet to socialize, discuss work over a cup of coffee or just relax, gazing out at the stars. Its spartan lines appealed to Chakotay, who wished that there was something similar to this on the Warrior. But then again, she was a ship of war, and everyone ate mostly sythethized rations.   
  
The short guy in front of him led him over to a corner of the mess hall. "She's over there," he said, pointing. Chakotay turned to look- and stopped.  
  
For a moment, it seemed as if he'd been transported back in time, back to Terra, 2347, on what was the still-lush continent of Europe back then. Spending days drenched in sunlight like golden honey in June, planning for another future, another time, amongst the verdant green grasses full of life and the trees full of song with … her. The memories came flooding back, a bittersweet torrent of love and hate and anger and loss. Even after all these years, he could not suppress them, no matter how hard he tried.  
  
She was sitting curled up in a chair, concentrating over a bunch of padds, her short auburn hair framing her face as she frowned over the contents of the padd she was holding. Sensing Chakotay's gaze on her, she looked up and smiled. "Good morning, Commander. Have a seat."  
  
He took a deep breath and nodded. "Thank you," he barely managed to get out. As he moved towards her, the short funny guy followed and put the steaming pot of coffee on the table. Janeway glanced at it. "Is that coffee I smell, Mr Neelix?" she asked.  
  
He nodded in reply. "Thank you," she said, and proceeded to pour the contents into her cup.   
  
Neelix. So that was the guy's name. He'd have to remember that. Chakotay's gaze followed his retreating figure all the way into the kitchen, unwilling to look at her. Afraid of giving away something too soon.  
  
"Is there something wrong?" she asked gently. "You seem a little...off this morning."  
  
"I'm just tired," said Chakotay, rubbing his eyes, which was more than just a little bit of an understatement.  
  
"How much did you sleep last night?" she asked. Looking at Chakotay's uncertain look, she concluded, "Not enough, I see. Look." She put down her padd on the table and grasped his hand. "I don't want you to tire yourself out, okay? Get some rest tonight."  
  
Chakotay only nodded.  
  
"I think some shore leave for you is in order," she added. "Or at least something to take your mind off work." She folded her arms.  
  
"That's going to be hard," muttered Chakotay.  
  
She apparently heard him, for her mouth twisted upwards in amusement. "How does dinner tonight sound to you?"  
  
Dinner? Chakotay didn't know whether he should be elated or horrified. On one hand, he wanted to get to know her better, to find that little girl again. On the other hand, he didn't want to jeopardize the mission. He gazed into her eyes and saw in it the pristine blue waters of France. "Yes," he finally said. "That sounds good." Unsure with what else to do, he mumbled a quick excuse to escape as fast as possible. "I have to go now," he said. "There's too many things to do."  
  
He stood up to leave, but she had already latched a hand on his arm. "Could you do me a favor?"  
  
Chakotay nodded.  
  
She passed him a padd. "Give this to Seven and tell her to run an analysis through it. She should know what to do." She gave him an encouraging smile. "Thank you."   
  
Chakotay glanced down at the padd. Neutrino emission graphs. "I'll try to find her," he promised. Not another unknown crewmember to find... with a barely perceptible sigh, he headed out of the mess hall.  
  
  
  
Chakotay stood in the middle of the junction, holding out the padd uncertainly and wondering how he should go about finding this Seven person. A pretty odd name, for one. Perhaps he should ask the computer for her whereabouts. Yes. It seemed like a good idea. Chakotay headed for the nearest console when somebody passing on the other side of the junction caught his eye. Ah, better. He could ask someone he vaguely knew. In a sense.  
  
"Annika," he called out.  
  
She stopped in the middle of her tracks and turned, giving Chakotay a highly confused look. "Commander?" From his vantage point she seemed to be wearing some sort of garish jewelry over eye left eye. Well, the Annika he knew was frivolous enough….   
  
Chakotay turned his attention back to the present. Annika was staring strangely at him- not a good sign. "I'm looking for Seven," he told her, carefully omitting the someone called which had formed part of the sentence in his brain. "Do you know where she is?"  
  
The strange look intensified. A warning bell went off in Chakotay's head: something was definitely not right here. He decided to tread with caution.  
  
"Are you feeling all right, Commander?" she asked.  
  
"Never better," replied Chakotay, shameless lying through his teeth. "I'm… just a little bit of a slow riser, that's all." That had better fit into my personality!  
  
Annika frowned. "Then… perhaps it might surprise you to know that you are talking to me."  
  
An odd sentence to counter and odd look. Chakotay quickly did a mental detachment and tried to logic his way out of the sticky situation. Obviously Annika felt that there was something wrong in him asking for this Seven person. What made that possible? Was Seven the name of the ship's computer? Unlikely. From what he'd heard, Fed computers weren't exactly christened. Then what else? Unless… in this universe… Annika's name was Seven. Yes. It made sense. Chakotay decided to take the risk. He handed Annika the padd. "Here. This is from the captain. She needs an analysis done of it."  
  
Annika took the padd and scanned through it at a phenomenal rate, as far as he could tell. "Fluctuations in our energy grid… brief shield failures…" She looked back at Chakotay. "This is essential information."  
  
Chakotay only nodded, feeling a fluttering in his heart. After all, they weren't supposed to detect all those results of his hasty transit.  
  
"The captain could have given them to me directly."  
  
Bingo. So she was Seven. Another thing to take note of. Chakotay shrugged. "She's very busy."  
  
Seven seemed to accept the fact. "Tell her the report will be ready by 0900 hours," she told Chakotay crisply, before going on her way.  
  
When she was gone, Chakotay let out a sigh of relief. That had been rather close. But first things first, he had his own report to make. And hell of a lot to learn before his first bridge duty at 1200 hours.  
  
  
  
Lt. B'Elanna Torres was not in a good mood. But then again, she rarely was when things turned bad. Lack of sleep never had much positive effects on Klingons, and she was a shining example of that testament. Standing in a corner and feeling amused, Tom Paris watched equipment fly all over as Torres, growling and grumbling, searched for an elusive padd amongst the clutter on the table that was a result of one of her fanatic all-nighters. "It's probably on the floor," he suggested to her after a while.  
  
Torres looked up from the wreckage on the table and glowered. "Go away and stop bumming around here, will you? Don't you have duty, or something?"  
  
"Not until 1200 hours." He bent down and picked a padd off the floor. "Is this what you were looking for?"  
  
"What? You knew where it was all the time and you didn't tell me?" She snatched the padd from his hand. "I could kill you for that."  
  
"Kill me? For finding your long-lost padd?" asked Paris dolefully. "How grateful."  
  
Grumpy as she was, Torres had to suppress a chuckle at Paris' supposedly hurt look. "Oh, go away. You're distracting me from work."  
  
"Why are you laughing? It isn't funny. You've hurt me deeply." Paris' eyes grew wider and more melancholy. "And you know you can never make up for that."  
  
Torres snorted as she popped open a wall panel to reveal the wiring beneath. As she wriggled inside to get to some deeply-buried connection, she muttered, "Trust you, Tom Paris, to always be my comic relief of the day… oh, damn!" The sentence ended abruptly as one of the leads gave her a nasty spark on her fingers.  
  
Intrigued, Paris leaned forward, deciding to drop the hurt-puppy act for the moment. "What're you doing?"  
  
Torres looked disgustedly at her singed fingers. "I'm rewiring our energy grid, that's what! The increased neutrino emissions from the asteroid's surface has been causing disruptions all over." She sighed. "But it looks like I'm going nowhere. Ten hours I've spent on it, and I've only managed to rewire four out of seventy junctions." She glared at the jumble of schematics and equipment on the table. "Whoever designed this system was either stone drunk when he did it, or else he has the mental capabilites of a spider."  
  
"I think a team of designers came up with it," said Paris.  
  
"Well," muttered Torres, diving back into the swarm of cables again, "I hope they all die an early death. By electrocution while fixing one of their hopeless systems." She finally managed to extricate the leads she wanted. Turning to Paris with the fat cords in her hand, she asked, "So what are you here for?"  
  
Paris said nothing for a moment, suddenly realized how frivolous his reason for coming here was. "Well… actually, I was just thinking, you know." Paris scuffed his feet on the carpet. "That kind of thing. I thought I'd tell you about it. Do you want to hear about it? " It was an odd notion and an odd request.  
  
Torres flipped the power switch, causing the lights in Engineering to flicker a little. "What were you thinking about?" She untwisted the two cords and set them down, like they were doing something perfectly normal. Tom was glad of that.  
  
"You know, about paths not taken and everything. Like, I've been thinking about it ever since that time where we bumped into those strange what's their name guys. The sector of space they effectively threw us out of. And… I don't know why, but ever since then I keep thinking of how else life might have turned out for me… for us, I mean." Paris shrugged. "It's kind of odd, I guess. But, I mean, have you ever thought about it yourself? How we would have turned out if we were living somewhere else?"   
  
Torres brought out the other set of leads and afforded him an odd glance. "I guess not. Like where, for example?"  
  
"I don't know. Maybe Earth. Or Mars. It's a wonderful place, very carefree. I went there once and I was amazed at the amount of liberty they give themselves. They have so little inhibitions… you know what I mean?"  
  
Torres nodded, attaching two cords together with a satisfying click. "It would be different, I guess." She frowned. "Have you ever thought of what it would be like to be living in turbulent conditions?"  
  
"Like back in the Maquis?" He shrugged and gesture to the coils of tubing she was methodically reassembling. "Don't we already live in one?"  
  
"No," she said, tossing the wires back into the compartment. "I mean really chaotic conditions. Where every day is a struggle for survival. I mean, we didn't exactly get along so well even in the Maquis."  
  
"But we didn't exactly get to know each other either," pointed out Paris, helping her to shove some of the leads back into the paneling. "But, after a lot of thought, I'm sure we'll function pretty well anywhere."  
  
"I sure hope so," replied Torres, snapping the wall panel back into place. "Five out of seventy. Want to help me?"  
  
"No problem," replied Paris, helping her pack up some of her equipment. As they headed for the next junction, Torres mumbled under her breath, "Stupid Starfleet capacitors… they can't even stand a few neutrino bombardments. Not like anyone was trying an illegal beam-in onto our ship or anything."  
  
  
  
The room Chakotay had been brought into was large and ornately furnished in dark tones. With its crudish lines and grotesque symbolism, it reminded him of a gothic torture chamber. Carved furniture of a dark, smooth polished material arrayed all around the room. On closer inspection, Chakotay discovered with faint horror that it was made of bone. He looked around the room. There seemed to be all sorts of things hiding in the dark foreboding corners of the room. The various ceremonial knives hanging along the wall only served to reinforce the atmosphere of a torture chamber. How could anyone live here? he wondered. It was so… creepy.  
  
It was also very heavily guarded. Six men were stationed outside with Annika, each carrying a large phaser rifle. Even with the fact that he was alone and there were very likely arrays of weapons hanging on the wall, Chakotay doubted that he could do much. Every move of his would surely be under constant surveillance. He turned back to examine the bone tables.  
  
"They're rather unpalatable, aren't they?" came a low husky voice from behind him. Chakotay jumped. She'd just sneaked up on him. "One of those Klingon Regents gave them to me… Worf, that was his name. They are most unnerving, but they come in useful." She sat on one of the tables and stroked its glossy surface. "Most of the crew think they're made of human bone. Wouldn't put that beneath Worf, though."  
  
Chakotay said nothing and merely stared at the Intendant. She was dressed in black, top to toe, just like Annika was. Leather jacket, tight polyester skirt, knee-length boots, and the tight bun which his own captain had given up on several years ago (too much of a bother, she'd said.). She looked the same… yet different. Older, somehow. Years of bitterness and anger and malice had etched their way onto her face, yet the lines served to make her look, more than ever, like a formidable opponent. He took a couple of involuntary steps back.  
  
She smiled cryptically at him, obviously taking delight in his discomfort. "How has your stay here been so far?" she asked him, sliding down into an ornate ebony armchair beside her. "Wonderful? Awful? I'd like to know."  
  
"Intriguing," was all that Chakotay conceded.   
  
The derisive smile widened. "Ah. So you find us interesting." She deftly lifted a cup of dark bubbling liquid beside her and drank a sip, never taking her pale glittering eyes off Chakotay. "What's more interesting, the fact that you are in an alternate dimension, or the fact that your alternate self is running loose on your own ship?"  
  
"What do you want with me?" countered Chakotay.  
  
Some of the arrogance left her eyes and she put the glass back down. "A direct man, I see." He got off the chair and walked slowly towards him, oozing wicked sensuality with every step. Chakotay back away and found himself fetched up against a bone table. She came closer and circled him slowly, like a hawk. Or a vulture.   
  
"It's very simple, Chakotay," she drawled. "You have something I want, and you're going to give it to me." She caught Chakotay's chin and drew him closer. "I want tactical information. Every single thing you know of the Voyager. You will tell me, and the rewards will be great."  
  
Chakotay drew back. "I don't want any rewards."  
  
"Really." She moved closer. "Anything and everything that you've ever wanted… wealth, power, luxury…" she leaned right on him. "Women…"  
  
Chakotay fought the impulse to hit her and run. "No thank you. I've already got all I wanted."  
  
She turned away from him slightly huffily. "So I see you're not going to cooperate."  
  
"I do not betray my fellow crewmembers for my own sake. Nothing you try on me is ever going to work, and you can take my word on that."  
  
"Not for your sake, maybe, but perhaps for others." A malicious smile flickered across her face. "Did you see the prisoners on the way out? Cowardly traitors, every single one of them, and a plague on board my ship. Now, Commander, their fate rests in your hands. I will kill one of them for every hour for which you refuse to cooperate. Women, children, everyone. So, the choice is up to you."  
  
Chakotay's mouth went dry. "You wouldn't."  
  
She stared back at him, and he imagined her fierce gaze boring a hole through his skull. "Try me."  
  
A sort of bitter gall rose in his throat, grating on his conscience and moving him towards anger. Chakotay let it grow and intensify, matching the intensity of his glower with hers. "You're a monster," he hissed., bringing out the fire with it. "I don't care what you look like, and who you're supposed to be, and you'd better not expect me to cooperate with the likes of you. The Kathryn I know will never do anything like this."  
  
For a second, something like a vulnerable look flashed across her face briefly, then her features hardened into a mask of scorn and anger, and it was gone. "Then you'll find out…. That I'm not anything like her." She stormed out of the room, leaving Chakotay alone. He could hear her telling Annika to keep him in the room, but he wasn't paying very much attention. In that moment, he'd seen something else in her face- something softer, something like regret. It was like a ray of hope. For a brief moment he'd managed to get something through to her. He could work on that- perhaps it would just be what he needed to knock some sense into this... person. Whatever his opinion of her, he was fairly sure that somewhere deep inside was the woman he knew as his captain. But he would have to probe deeply for that. Much like gold mining long ago on Earth. Or oil prospecting.  
  
Chakotay leaned back on the table and smiled to himself. He knew now what he should do.  
  
  
  
The gigantic cavern several hundred meters below the surface of the asteroid was one in a series of linked chambers stretching halfway across the asteroid's mammoth perimeter. There were no winds, but the temperature was a biting 273 degrees Kelvin, and so dry it stung one's eyes. Ensign Harry Kim shivered under his regulation uniform and wished to hell that he'd worn an extra jacket. Doing his best to ignore the cold, he pointed his tricorder at another site and began scanning. He was beginning to feel tired of this mission. If there was any dilithium in this rock, it sure as hell was well hidden.  
  
Kim's frustrations were not unfounded. For two days now away teams had been combing the interior for the elusive crystals, yet the searches had turned up nothing save for odd energy fluctuations and mere hints of where they might lie. This particular team had been on the surface for over two hours. Getting up early in the morning to hunt fruitlessly through a gigantic freezer wasn't exactly Kim's idea of fun. He found himself wishing for his nice warm bed.  
  
"Harry," exclaimed a voice, "I think you'd better take a look at this."  
  
The voice belonged to Jenny Delaney, one of the more enchanting crewmembers on board. Kim hurried over to see what she was so excited about. "Look," she said, turning her tricorder in his direction to let him see the readings. "This narrow passageway seems to lead to a chamber deeper within the crust- and it's the apparent locus of all our energy spikes."  
  
One glance at the elevated neutrino readings and Kim nodded. "It seems worth investigating." He motioned to the third member of the away team. "Kesin, you stay here as backup." He motioned to Delaney. "I'll take the lead; you keep the rear."   
  
Compared to the spaciousness of the outer chamber, the narrow passageway felt almost claustrophobic. Harry shone his wrist lamp forward, illuminating the path before.  
  
Whatever the place they were heading to hadn't been used in a long time. The musty smell of the caverns grew stronger as the two headed deeper in. The atmosphere also seemed to be growing thicker, less rarified than the one in the previous cavern. It made sense- it was deeper in and more well protected from leaks into the hungry vacuum of space. Too bad it wasn't growing any warmer.  
  
About 500 meters down the passageway abruptly widened into a cavernous blueness. Kim paused, unable to believe his eyes. Before him was an astonishing sight. Row and rows of neatly stacked gray containers stretched on as far as the eye could see, each accompanied by a softly humming black device that activated a softly glowing blue force field over it.  
  
He checked his tricorder readings. The energy spikes indeed come from here. And the resonance spectrometry seemed to indicated that these containers hoarded a cache of treasure.  
  
He walked over to the nearest stack and ran his tricorder over it. On a hunch, he rolled the phasing of the frequency of the blue field that he was getting to half a period ahead, and transmitted this new frequency to the black object. The blue field snapped off, allowing Kim a closer look at the stack of gray containers. They were nondescript, made of a matte gray metal that dully reflected light. Each was fastened by a simple magnetic clasp at the sight. Kim deactivated the switch of the one on top and popped the cover off. Beneath, arranged in orderly rows, were symmetrical white crystals that sparkled blue in his wrist lamp's beam.  
  
"Bingo," he whispered. They'd struck gold.  
  
"Kim to Voyager. I think I've found something of interest to you…"  
  
  
  
Harry Kim was on the bridge of the Warrior, carefully monitoring the output of the ship's cloaking shields, keeping the outflux of particles to the minimum. Still, he wasn't very successful, for the ship was leaking neutrinos like an oversized sponge. If the other ship in orbit had sensors half the size of what he thought they would, their ship's presence would be detected-or at least suspected- in an instant.  
  
He intended to keep it that way.   
  
The Secant was manning Tactical Control when the alert trill sounded. Tuvok, ever alert, leaned over the panel and gestured to the Intendant. "Take a look at this, Kathryn. I believe that there's more to this rock chunk than meets the eye."  
  
The Intendant walked over and leaned on his shoulder, studying the readouts of the panel. "Dilithium deposits? Is that what they were looking for?"  
  
"I would guess so," replied the Secant. "Although I doubt they will get there first."  
  
The Intendant's face split into a wolfish smile. "What say we take a little walk, Tuvok?"  
  
The Vulcan gazed back at her with undisguised greed. "I think it's time for us to do a restocking of the Inventory again."  
  
Kim watched the two leave the bridge hand-in-hand and glanced over at Paris. The moment they were gone, Paris doubled over in a fit of laughter. "Did you see that?"  
  
Kim laughed. "Are you kidding? I nearly puked!" He glanced around at the bridge crew and said, "Heck, with the two of them on it, I hope the asteroid blows up just about now."  
  
A small mumur rippled across the bridge crew, which by now completely consisted of Rebel members, which made up nearly half the ship's population. Paris leaned backwards and suggested, "You know, now that you have control of weapons and everything, we might just as well not leave that to nature…"  
  
He cut his sentence short as Annika came sauntering onto the bridge. She winked at Paris. "Hi Tom." She swept her gaze across the bridge through lowered lids and sighed, blowing air through her pouty lips. "Isn't it boring here?"  
  
Paris grunted back, focusing his attention on the navigation screen.  
  
"I wonder…" said Annika slowly and provocatively, "if anyone has a moment to spare tonight?"  
  
Paris shrugged, keeping his eyes on his screen. "I'm busy. I have an… appointment." He swiveled and turned to face Kim with a devilish glint in his eyes. "But I bet Hair's free."  
  
Annika leaned on Kim's console. "Oh, are you?"   
  
Kim grinned back. "For dinner, I'm always free."  
  
"That's good." Annika grinned guilefully and patted him on the shoulder. "Then consider yourself volunteered for guard duty." Watching his incredulous reaction, she added, "You can take over my duty for me. Then I'd owe you one." She winked. "Wouldn't I?"  
  
Kim gave one of those "dang you and your clever ideas" looks and nodded. "Of course. Dinner, tomorrow."  
  
Annika giggled. "Only if you survive tonight." Then she sashayed her way off the bridge.  
  
Kim turned to glare at Paris. "I'm gonna get you for that, Atoms."  
  
"Get me? For helping you get a date with your girl?" replied Paris dryly. "Oh, that's nice. I'm dying with the gratitude, Hairs."  
  
Kim rolled his eyes as the crew laughed, but found himself laughing as well. There were lots of worse places to be in the universe than with your friends, he reflected. Lots worse.  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

To Stay Where You Are (Part Three)  
  
A sillier Fanfic written by TaTTooGaL™  
  
  
  
  
Commandant Chakotay stood in the middle of the vast cavern, staring at the rows and rows of dilithium in wonder. Nearly fifty tons of top-grade material was stocked here, easily worth their weight in gold-pressed latinum, possibly twice more on the black market. With that much money, the rebellion would be rich beyond belief- it would be enough to supply them with a proper fleet of small warcraft. Plus all those they'd salvaged themselves…. it would certainly tilt the balance of the war a little further. He suddenly saw the potential in these derelict asteroid fields. If every asteroid out here contained treasure troves like this….  
  
Still, he was worried. The careful packing and arrangement of the dilithium crystals indicated that they belonged to someone, and if they tried to hide it so hard, it surely meant that the dilithium meant a lot to them.  
  
Kim gestured to his tricorder. "The readings seem to indicate that the relative age of these boxes are about a thousand five hundred years old, which would be consistent with the neutrino leakage," he said. "The cloaking devices haven't been service for over a thousand years, and instead of hiding the dilithium they're amplifying their resonance frequency." He gazed up into the inky blackness of the cavern's ceiling. "Whoever or whatever put these things here are long gone."  
  
"Leaving it free for us to take," commented Jenny Delaney from behind.  
  
"Only from our frame of time," said Chakotay. "For races who live for hundreds of years, the next generation is not even middle-aged."  
  
Kim grunted. "Let's not be too pessimistic, Commander." And he carried on with his scans.  
  
Easy for you to say, thought Chakotay bitterly. He walked down the rows of neat dilithium crystals , mentally counting them and pricing them. If only there was some way to make off with them….  
  
"It's really tempting to make off with them, isn't it?" asked a voice from his side.  
  
Chakotay jumped a foot in the air. He nearly yelled, but she was faster, grabbing him and stifling his mouth. Chakotay could feel his heartbeat accelerate to an unbearable pace. "Hush," she whispered.  
  
Chakotay glared at her as she released him. "What are you doing here? You're jeopardizing the mission!" he hissed angrily. "I already submitted my first report this morning."  
  
"And so did the doctor," said the Intendant. She gestured to the piles of dilithium. "But neither of you mentioned this."  
  
"Maybe that's because we just found it,' snapped Chakotay.  
  
"Well, it's too bad that they found all this first," intoned Tuvok, inserting himself between Janeway and Chakotay. "And it would be wrong to take it from them."  
  
"Very wrong," drawled Janeway, and the both of them laughed maliciously. "But hell of a fun."  
  
"But we wouldn't do it, would we," said Tuvok in the same flat poker voice.  
  
"No, of course not," replied the Intendant, hooking her arm with Tuvok's. "We're too considerate."  
  
"You can't do this!" spluttered Chakotay angrily. "They need the dilithium much more than you do! You can't plan to take it all away because you think it's fun!"  
  
Janeway shrugged. "Why do they need it? After all, when we take over their ship, we'll be stocking it with this dilithium anyway. Consider it… a first installment of what is to come." She giggled. "We might as well give them a preliminary scare, to prepare them for what's coming after." She favored Chakotay with a low-lidded glare. "Unless… you aren't sympathizing with them, are you?"  
  
Chakotay shook his head. "It's just that…won't they suspect anything if fifty tons of dilithium gets stolen right under their noses?"  
  
"That's your problem, not mine, Commandant," she told him. From across the vast chamber, Chakotay heard Harry Kim calling for him. She smiled viciously. "You could always warn them… if you dare."  
  
Chakotay merely glared at her and stalked off in Kim's direction.  
  
The young ensign was beaming. "We got the green light from the captain. These modules are to be beamed to Cargo Bay One."  
  
"Then do it, now," ordered Chakotay. "As fast as you can." Let's see how she's going to get all these past their shields, he thought smugly.  
  
Kim nodded. "I've already gotten the signals locked on." He spoke to his communicator. "Kim to Voyager. Energize."  
  
A shimmering blue light filled the chamber as the dilithium dematerialized from within it.  
  
Chakotay smiled. Can't beat me this time, Kathryn. He turned back to face Kim, only to find him staring pale-faced at his tricorder.  
  
"I don't know about this," he said, "but according to this thing, that whole shipment didn't get to the Voyager at all. It just vanished."  
  
  
  
  
Chakotay stormed into the conference room feeling unreasonably angry. The incorrigible vixen, he thought. I want to strangle her. How could she?  
  
All his angry thoughts subsided, however, when he saw her standing there, in front of the long gray table, talking to Seven in worried tones. She turned at the sound of the door opening. "Commander!" She frowned. "I assume you were there when all the dilithium… disappeared? What precisely happened?"  
  
A pang of guilt knifed through Chakotay. Here he'd have to go, lying again. "I'm not very sure," he said, "but I have the feeling someone else took it."  
  
"The other source of the energy spikes," said Seven with certainty.  
  
"Let's not jump to conclusions, Seven," said the captain. "Could it be some self- defense mechanism? To prevent people from stealing the dilithium?"  
  
"The dilithium was definitely transported out," said Chakotay. "I saw it myself. What do our transporter logs record?"  
  
"The transporters lost their lock on the targets five nanoseconds before beaming was to commence," replied Seven. "Could it possibly have been transported to a another site within the asteroid?"  
  
At that moment, the rest of the senior crew came filing into the room and settled into their accustomed seats. Chakotay took the last one left, to the right of the captain.  
  
She stood and took the floor, describing what had happened to their dilithium in detail. The more Chakotay listened, the angrier he got at the Intendant. This dilithium meant a lot to these people, he thought. They'd been searching for it for a long time, only to have it snatched away five nanoseconds before they'd have gotten it. So close, yet so far. Sometimes Chakotay felt that his own freedom was in this situation.  
  
"It is possible that the other source of neutrinos could be a similar storage facility equipped with its own tractor beam." It was Tuvok speaking. "When it detected that the dilithium was about to be taken, it automatically transported the goods over."  
  
"Unlikely, though," interjected Seven. "The modular signals of the two isolated sources appear to be different, indicating that different cloaking shields are employed."  
  
"Then what do you suggest it could be?" asked Neelix.  
  
"I have gone through a thorough analysis of the emission pattern," said Seven, and have come to a conclusion that is a starship of sorts."  
  
Chakotay's heart fluttered. Whoever this Seven was in this universe, she was pretty sharp- much quicker than Annika, anyway. He wondered what extra enhancements she possessed in this particular dimension. Certainly more brains than boobs, at any rate- and she had plenty of both, he reflected.  
  
"So maybe it's a backup ship belonging to these people, so that they can fly the dilithium off to safer places when it gets threatened," suggested Paris.  
  
"Or a pirate ship sponging off our rightful bounty," remarked Torres darkly.  
  
So close to the answer. If only they knew. Chakotay had to fight the impulse to stand up and tell them the whole nine parsecs of the story. Not yet, the mission isn't over… we need time to prepare.  
  
Janeway frowned slightly –Chakotay couldn't help noticing that she looked extraordinarily alluring when she did that- and placed her hands on her hips. "I don't care if this starship is on a treasure hunt involving collecting eighty tons of dilithium. It's hiding itself, disrupting our electrical systems and collaring our things. I want it found and I want to talk to its commanding officer. If there is a commanding officer."  
  
I have a feeling that is going to be an extremely interesting meeting, thought Chakotay with great irony. But it would be inevitable, undesirable as it was, He suppressed a sigh as Janeway meted out orders and dismissed the crew.  
  
Chakotay was one of the last to leave. As he stepped out of the door, Janeway called out. "Don't forget," she reminded him. "Dinner at 0700 hours, my quarters."  
  
Chakotay nodded. Until then, he had lots of things to do.  
  
  
  
  
Chakotay was napping on the cold bone bench when he was alerted by a sharp rap on the door. "Chakotay?"  
  
He recognized the voice. "Ensign Kim?" he asked, heading towards the door.  
  
"That's me, Harry Kim," came the affirmation. "Otherwise known as 'Not-by-the-hairs-on-my-chinny-chin-chin'-Kim," he added.  
  
Chakotay had to laugh at that one. "Interesting. Where's Annika? And are the six other guards still there?"  
  
"Relax. She's probably off somewhere flirting with men," he told Chakotay. "And all of us here are on your side."  
  
"On my side?" asked Chakotay, confused.   
  
"Yeah. On the rebels' side. Janeway wants to take over your ship, and we want to take over hers. Naturally we should work together."  
  
Chakotay took this in stride. "I've been recalling a lot of what I remember about Kirk's first encounter with the mirror universe," he told Kim. "I can understand why you'd want to be a rebel. It's all for the human cause, isn't it?"  
  
"Not all, though," Kim replied morosely. "We still have people like the Intendant. Did you know she stole half of the dilithium supplies you shipmates found this afternoon? The stinkin' witch."  
  
"She did what?"  
  
"Stole the dilithium. She beamed them out from right under the Commandant's - that'll be you- nose. Or at least, that's what The Doctor says. He's working in tandem with the Voyager's doctor right now. We're slowly plotting the takeover."  
  
"You doctor is holographic too?"  
  
"You can bet on it. The Empire's too miserly to spend any money in training real doctors for something as insignificant as human health, so all we got was a misanthropic program. But at least programs can be reprogrammed. B'Elanna's a wonder."  
  
"So I take it that my counterpart is also on our side?"  
  
"You got that right. He led us here, you know, after developing all these plans on the base at Terok Nor. It's brilliant, I tell you. Up till now, the Intendant has never suspected that half her crew is preparing for a mutiny."  
  
"She must be really dense."  
  
"Nah. We're just really good." Chortles from outside. "But just she wait. I'll make her pay for all the things she's done to us- and our colleagues."  
  
"Listen- is it really true that she's killing prisoners to force me to talk?" A pang of worry crept into Chakotay's heart.  
  
There was silence for a moment. "I guess, if she says so. The Intendant doesn't make empty threats." More hesitant silence. Then, finally: "Listen: Don't get too upset about that. I know what she regularly does to prisoners, and my opinion is that they're better off dead. Just wait a few days, bide your time, and help us distract the Intendant and the Secant."  
  
"The Secant? Is he some kind of mathematician? Who's he?"  
  
Harry sighed. "Tuvok."  
  
"Why him? And how?"  
  
"Keep him jealous. He's very protective of the Intendant. Same goes for Annika. The three of them, I don't know what they do together at night." He sighed wistfully. "The things I'd do to get a night alone with Annika…"  
  
Chakotay laughed. Some things never changed in any universe or the other. "I'll try my best," he said. "But I've got plans of my own. I hope they'll all fit in."  
  
"I think they should; after all you're the same person -oh crepes, here comes the Intendant. Never mind, I'll try to talk later. Nice meeting you, at any rate." Chakotay could hear the movement of the phaser rifles. "At attention, people…"  
  
"Hello, Harry. How's it going?" Chakotay sensed a note of triumph in her voice.   
  
"Fine, ma'am. The prisoner's awfully quiet, though." A general murmur of assent.  
  
"Well, that means I'll just have to get him to talk, won't I?" Chakotay could almost hear the feral grin in her voice. "Well done, the seven of you. Dismissed."  
  
The door swished open and admitted the Intendant. Chakotay curled up on the bench, facing the viewport and refusing to look at her. However, he could feel her powerful gaze sweep the room. "You haven't eaten," she finally said disdainfully.  
  
Chakotay thought of the synthesized rations growing cold on the desk. "I'm not hungry," he lied.  
  
"You must eat." There was no questioning the order in the statement.  
  
Chakotay turned to face her. "Or what? You'll kill me? Like you killed all your other prisoners?"  
  
"Not all; I have plenty left." She smiled wickedly and settled on the bench next to Chakotay, much closer than he'd liked. "They didn't have to die, you know," she told him. "Ah, if only you'd cooperated…"  
  
"That's not going to work on me," Chakotay told her tersely. "I'm used to making sacrifices."  
  
"I can tell," she said, smiling slowly. She lifted her hand and ran her fingertips gently along the line of his chin. Chakotay did not make a move. "Reports keep coming in from the operatives on your starship. Such lonely lives you lead," she said, with great sympathy –Chakotay wasn't convinced that it was entirely false- in her voice. "So restricted. And I thought that people complained that the Klingons have a militaristic society!" She laughed ironically. "And here you are, living your lives out in a straightjacket, even thousands of light years away from home." She leaned forward to leer at him. "Human freedom, indeed."  
  
Chakotay glanced at her witheringly. "And I suppose you consider your rule here very liberal."  
  
"Liberal, yes, in a sense." She shifted closer to him. "But discipline must be kept in other areas."  
  
"Why are you doing this?" asked Chakotay. "Turning against your own kind. Working with the enemy."  
  
Her steel-blue eyes flashed. "They're the enemy only because people like you think it so," she said angrily, and Chakotay realized that this wasn't the first time she was having this argument with him-from a certain point of view. She stood up and paced angrily around the room."If we were to work with them, they wouldn't be the enemy. Can't you see? The more we cooperate the more power, the more authority over the way we run things we will have. So much more so than if we just resist them. You think you're doing humankind a favor, but you're not. The Empire and its allies have so much more power than we do. They'll squash us, Chakotay, wipe us out completely. Is that what you want?"  
  
Chakotay stared back equally fiercely. "And you think working with them will help? I read my history books, Intendant, and from what I know of Kirk's encounter, these people are barbarians. They see no logic. Working with them will never help. They'll just take advantage of our subservience and turn us into their slaves." He jumped out of his seat and strode towards her. "You call me blind, but you don't see what is happening around you. You're so consumed in your cause that you don't see how much damage they are doing- to your crew's morale, to yourself! Look at you! No self-respecting person would ever stoop to so low a method to take over someone else's ship. What have they done to your dignity, Kathryn? They've taken so much from you. Are they ever going to give it back?"  
  
They were standing face to face now. In the maelstrom of anger in her eyes, he saw something else: a flash of uncertainty, a bright spark of unreasonable angst. Then nothing. Her face went slack, devoid of emotion. "Eat your dinner," she said softly. Then she strode away to the bathroom.  
  
Chakotay stood alone in the middle of the dark room, watching her go, feeling the pounding of his blood in his ears. His plan was working. He'd just glimpsed part of the painful emotional torrent that she kept so well hidden within her, and he knew that not all hope was lost. That was her weak point, and if he could exploit it further, he just might be able to turn her back from her misguided path. Just.  
  
He settled back slowly on the bench, wondering what kind of hell the Alliance had put this tough bitter woman through. But he knew for sure that somehow, they'd make them pay. It just depended on how much effort he'd put into changing her mind in the next few days.  
  
  
  
  
Chakotay stood in front of the mirror- the one he'd moved prior to capturing his counterpart – and took a deep steadying breath. Yet it did nothing to calm the rapid thumping in his heart or the liquid fluttery feeling in his stomach. Relax, he told himself. It's only dinner.  
  
But he had a strange premonition he knew what was going to happen anyway.  
  
He stared into the mirror and saw the reflection of a haunted man. A man haunted by years of hardship and emotional exhaustion and still being haunted, even here. Should he tell her the truth? After all, she deserved to know what had happened to her dilithium. Yet how was he going to keep her from confronting the Intendant? If she knew to soon, then she'd be ready for the rebellion.  
  
Or did it matter anymore? The Warrior, powerful warship as she was, was barely half as large as the Voyager, and, considering that she'd been in several major skirmishes over the past few weeks without docking back at base, probably not in as good shape. If Janeway knew that an attack from the Intendant was forthcoming, she'd probably be able to thwart it, turn the tables even. In that case… no. Safer to stay with the mission plan first. He'd apologize later.   
  
He stepped out of his quarters-he had a phenomenal memory and by now had memorized most of the ship's schematics- and headed for the captain's, hoping that his lack of regulation uniform wouldn't draw much attention. Thankfully, by the time he'd reached her quarters, he'd only caught a glimpse of two vaguely familiar faces.  
  
"Come," she said. The door swished open and Chakotay found himself staring at an apparition from a dream.  
  
She was dressed in a long shimmering gown, dark silver with black highlights, leaving nothing of her figure to his imagination. The front of the gown had a high slit, and its V-neck was wide open, enough to reveal lots of flesh- and more. It looked stunning on her, and Chakotay stared, mesmerized. She noticed his intense gaze and smiled. "I found the specs in one of our WW2 holoprograms," she told him. "But it cost me nearly twenty replicator rations." She rolled her eyes. "Plus dinner tonight, that means I'll either have to starve for the rest of the week, or eat at Neelix's." Her mouth twisted wryly at the thought. "I think starving is a better idea."  
  
Chakotay laughed, feeling the tense ball in his stomach seep away. He took a seat on the sofa behind the table she'd pulled to a corner of the room and admired her back as she went to fetch the food from the replicator. She looked just as good as from the front.  
  
She returned with two trays of food and a brightly lit, intricately carved blue and white candle. She placed the candle in the center of the table and served Chakotay the soup. "First course- lobster bisque with powdered clams."  
  
Chakotay took a bite from it and smiled. "I know this sounds rather clichéd, but I think you're the best cook I've ever met."  
  
"Yes, I can push replicator buttons better than anyone you know," she deadpanned, settling down beside him. Chakotay laughed.  
  
Throughout the course of the dinner, she mindfully steered their conversation away from anything to do with work, but Chakotay wasn't paying very much attention. He was too busy admiring and drinking in every aspect of her. It had been too long since they'd been like this.  
  
After dessert she brought out a bottle of gold liquid sparkling like sunlight in June, that Chakotay hadn't seen since he was in France. He stared in amazement at the bottle and its contents.  
  
"It's champagne," she told him. "Neelix somehow managed to buy this from some obscure merchant- for how much, he didn't say. He gave it to me." She looked fondly at the bottle. "It's come such a long way from home…" She poured some of the contents into the two glass cups on the table. "A bit of a waste, I must admit, but it suits the atmosphere." She settled back down beside him, much closer than before.  
  
He picked the cup up and took a sip of the sweet liquid. She followed suit. "And what precisely are we celebrating?" he asked her.  
  
"We found the dilithium, for one thing," she said. At this, Chakotay suddenly remembered the Intendant, and his high spirits fell like a plunging angel.  
  
She must have noticed his sudden inflation in demeanor, as the instantly switched the topic. "There's so much else to celebrate- we've come so far and we've made it… celebration of friendships…" She turned to face him, taking more sips. "We might be all alone in this quadrant, but at least we got the finest damned crew in this sector of the universe."  
  
He smiled and drank more of the champagne.  
  
Janeway frowned and put down her cup. "What's wrong? You're unusually quiet."  
  
He gazed intently at her. 'Nothing… it's just that I was thinking… how beautiful you are."  
  
She grinned wryly. "Now that's a cliché."  
  
He said nothing for a while, letting a strange electric tension form between them. Then, with one swift gesture, he broke it, leaning forward to kiss her lips.  
  
To her credit, didn't act surprised at all. In fact, she kissed him back. Wholly and deeply.  
  
After a few protracted moments, she whispered into his ear, "Our relationship is strictly professional, remember?"  
  
"Hmmm. I haven't forgotten." Chakotay buried his face deeply between her neck and her hair. "I consider this a strictly professional job."  
  
She laughed, allowing him to move closer to the nape of her neck. "You're evil."  
  
"I know." Working his way down her neck.  
  
She got up, pulling him across the room by his waist. He made no move to resist, searching for the clasp in her dress somewhere at the back, still exploring places he'd never been to in such a long time. It was a sweet sensation, almost like déjà vu. Happy memories of childhood mixed together with the fiery reds and cool blue shades of passion, everything merging and swimming together like two streams running into an ocean, losing themselves in the azure torrent. Groping hands, cupped to tap the sweetness and depth of their feeling, savoring every moment as if it would last forever. Two souls, rising into the night sky, dancing and communing amongst the brilliant glow of the aurora borealis.  
  
"Computer, lights out," she managed to say before they plunged back into a world of infinite cerulean blue.  
  
  
  
  
The Intendant was curled up on her bed, softly asleep and looking just like her mirror counterpart for all Chakotay could tell. She'd not spoken to him since she'd entered, and he'd just spent the last three hours convincing himself that this step was totally necessary in his plan. He chewed on the last of the cold rations bar thoughtfully and put the wrapper aside. Taking a deep breath, he slid over to where the Intendant lay.  
  
As he stood by her bedside, he became suddenly unsure. What if Tuvok or Annika were somehow watching him through some wired surveillance device somewhere in the room?  
  
No matter. It might even be to his advantage.  
  
Chakotay slipped silently between the covers and nestled up beside her. Her eyes flicked open instantly. Had she been silently observing him all this while, or was she a really light sleeper? Chakotay guessed it was a combination of both. Living in a world where just anybody might murder you had to be really stressful.  
  
She gazed at him with cool azure eyes. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"I've eaten," he told her.  
  
For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then they didn't say anything for the next few moments either, for they were engaged in one of the most passionate kisses Chakotay had ever had in a long time. They finally broke off, gasping for air, and the flinty anger that had seemed a permanent part of her had somehow evaporated, leaving in its place a burning fire of passion, shining brightly in her eyes.  
  
She pulled him closer to her. "It's been a long time, Chakotay…"  
  
He responded by reaching for the band of her wispy nightgown.  
  
She giggled furiously, like a little girl, removing his Starfleet issue jacket only to find two more layers underneath. "One thing I hate about your universe," she exhaled, "too conservative."  
  
"Maybe we can both learn something from each other," he said softly, as they locked lips. They said nothing more, but in his mind's eye they were talking and laughing and getting to know each other with their bodies and their spirits in a world far, far away from this dark and dismal one, where the sun shone like golden honey in June and the verdant green grass was full of life and the trees were full of song…  
  
Outside, a single brilliant star twinkled as the two ships continued their twinned dance around the asteroid.  
  
  
  
  
And in the deep caverns far below, a small light was winking, and had been winking, for the past few hours. Sending and receiving information to the rightful heirs of the dilithium. The vengeful conquerors, jealous of their quarry, were bearing down upon the asteroid unbeknownst to its visitors.  
  
Ensign Kesin, on vigilant duty guarding the dilithium, did not notice the small Borg transmitting module as he walked past it on one of his numerous patrol rounds.  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

To Stay Where You Are (Part Three)  
  
A sillier Fanfic written by TaTTooGaL™  
  
  
  
  
He was dreaming that he was back in France, before the Final Conquest. Running through woods and forests for no rhyme or reason, splashing in creeks, washing in rainstorms which left behind sparkling drops on the leaves on the trees. Savoring the sunlight like golden honey and the grasses full of life and the trees full of song. Then came a tempestuous whirlwind of fire and dust, sweeping him off his feet and carrying him to places of dark sky and black plains, riding the wilds on the back of a pale horse, and the world was a steady beating pulse of red, black, red, black, red….  
  
Chakotay awoke with a start. For a moment, he felt disoriented- then he suddenly remembered, the memories gushing forth like a fountain of crystal, clear and cleansing. He pushed himself gently into a sitting position and watched her sleep in an euphoria of wonder. She looked so vulnerable and innocent as she slept. So peaceful. His thoughts inevitably drifted to the Intendant and he recalled the lyrics of a song he'd heard so many years ago.  
  
Gone are the days /When I was young and free  
  
The future /I could see  
  
Gone are the days /Of precious love  
  
Leaned on /And relied on  
  
She stirred gently and opened her eyes. She saw him gazing down fondly at her and smiled back. "That was something."  
  
He nodded, as she gently placed her hand on his arm. "I waited too long," she said softly, seemingly lost in thought. "Far too long."  
  
"I've something to tell you," he said abruptly.  
  
She glanced at him with slight alarm at the seriousness in his tone, immediately pushing herself up to face him. "What is it, Chakotay?" she asked. "If you're feeling uncomfortable about-"  
  
"No, no, it's nothing like that at all," Chakotay immediately interjected, wondering how he should start. Gathering his courage and strength, he announced, "I know who stole the dilithium."  
  
Her eyes widened.  
  
Chakotay took a deep breath. "I've also been hiding something from you." Quickly he blurted it out, afraid that he would lose the courage to do so if he delayed. "I'm not Chakotay."  
  
She drew back, stunned. "What?" She gave him a once-over and concluded, "You're not serious."  
  
"But I am!" He grabbed her by the shoulders and she flinched backwards as if repulsed by him. "Please! Listen. I'm not Chakotay, but I am also him, in a sense. I'm from- how would you put it? - An alternate universe." He glanced at her non-comprehending look and continued desperately, "I'm on a mission to obtain tactical information on you ship, but the point is, we're on your side and I meant no harm to your ship-"  
  
She broke free of his grip, having heard enough. "On my side?" She glared at him angrily. "And I'm supposed to believe that, after… all that you've done to me?" She gestured expansively downwards, and Chakotay felt a flush of guilt.  
  
"I'm sorry about that. It's just that I… I just…" the words caught in his throat, and he turned away, trying to suppress the painful biting memories that were clogging his chest.  
  
I never dreamt that it would be like this  
  
My first love/ The last time  
  
She noticed his discomfort and dropped her defensive stance a little. "Is there a problem?" she asked him gently, placing her hand on his shoulder.  
  
Chakotay shook his head, refusing to glance up at her. "You remind me of someone I knew long ago when I was young."  
  
She gently lifted his chin , and he reluctantly raised his head to face her. She wasn't angry anymore, just sympathetic. "It was me, wasn't it."  
  
He nodded, unable to think of anything else to say.  
  
"And so, I'm dead in your universe?" she prodded gently, unwilling to upset him any further.  
  
"No… much more complicated than that." Strengthened by her understanding, he forged on. "According to your ships' logs, the furthest you know about our universe was from almost a century ago. If I'm right, you have no knowledge of all the recent conflicts at Terok Nor."  
  
"Terok Nor… wasn't that the original Cardassian name of Deep Space Nine?"   
  
"Yes. Unfortunately for us there isn't exactly a Starfleet or even a United Federation of Planets to take it over, and the Bajorans are a lot chummier with the Cardies and friends in our universe than yours." He heaved a sigh. "It's a long story. Are you sure you want to hear it?"  
  
"I've got plenty of time," she told him, settling on the pillows. "I want you to end off with what you're doing here, and what's happened to Chakotay- my Chakotay."  
  
He nodded. "In due time." And in the back of his head, still the lyrics played, haunting him, swimming in a sea of blue so deep it drowned out the sunlight.  
  
I hear a voice, I see you laugh  
  
If only you were here  
  
You see the night and I the day  
  
But someday, we'll walk away  
  
  
  
  
Seven of Nine was working the late shift on the bridge with Tuvok and Paris, who looked plain exhausted, apparently after helping Lt. Torres rewire half the ship in a mad three-hour fit that afternoon. As a matter of fact, everyone on the ship looked more than slightly worn-out, considering that the accumulative mysteries of this one strange asteroid was fraying everyone's nerves. All except Tuvok and Seven herself. Tuvok's Vulcan heritage allowed him to keep his more rampant emotions in check, but Seven had nothing else to maintain her perennially cool composure except a steadiness of mind and an iron discipline wrought of being assimilated for 18 years. Currently she was running three tasks at the same time to make up for the skeleton bridge crew. Every now and then she went back to check the sensor logs to monitor any change whatsoever in the readings.  
  
About 2358 hours she noticed a strange anomaly in the EM emissions in the asteroid. She corresponded her readings with that of the previous few days and isolated the anomaly, which, while faint, showed definite modular pulsation, indicating a message of some sort was being transmitted.  
  
Then she recognized the pattern of the signal.   
  
Her heart gave a slight flutter, and she double-checked her readings. No, there was no mistake. The readings clearly were a calling to arms. She de-encrypted them mentally, working backwards to obtain the time transmission began. If they were lucky, Voyager had ten hours to act before the reinforcements arrived. She tapped on her commbadge.  
  
"Seven of Nine to Janeway. Captain, I believe that we have company coming."  
  
  
  
  
Chakotay finished most of what he could of the warship's recent history in as little time as he could, pausing every now and then to answer her questions as best as he could. When he had finished, he stared silently at her, watching how well she would absorb all this. He had said all there was to say.  
  
"So.." she said at length, "you need our help in your mutiny aboard the ship."  
  
"Yes. You will distract the Intendant while we prepare to strike, and in return, you can have some of the dilithium you need so badly."  
  
She narrowed her eyes. "I think I may have an idea."  
  
He nodded, pleased. "I thought you might."  
  
"But we won't have much time to carry it out.... at most forty-eight hours, according to your timing." She frowned. "It's a very dangerous margin."  
  
"But it is possible."  
  
She got out of the bed to fetch a robe. "We must move as fast as we can."  
  
"To stay where we are," Chakotay added dryly.  
  
She pulled on a gray silken robe and gave him a funny look. "What was that about?" she asked, pulling it tight.  
  
"The Intendant. It was something she said to me once... a long time ago, when she was defending some of her harsher tactics when she first took command. She said we shouldn't work against the tide of events, because it would waste unnecessary energy. But if we went with the flow instead, things would be a lot easier." He sighed. "At first, it seemed so logical to me. Then gradually I began to realize that it was all a false hope. I began to get more and more disillusioned. That was when the Terran rebels contacted me." He gestured. "And so, here I am."  
  
She sat back down on the bed as he went over to pick up his discarded clothes. "You haven't told me much about you and the Intendant."  
  
Chakotay paused, then sighed. "I already told you that we met in France, 2347."  
  
"Go, on," she prodded, "Elaborate. We might just be able to use it to our advantage."  
  
He shut his eyes and sat back down on the bed. He took a deep breath, opened his eyes and started. "In the summer that year, I was visiting a relative in Paris, and I used to frequent a cafe..."  
  
  
It was June and the flowers in Paris were full bloom. From his vantage on the café's mezzanine on the second floor, he could see far into the distance riots of colors stretching all the way to the Eiffel Tower. Nevertheless, he wasn't really looking at the flowers; instead, he found the girl sitting at the next table far more interesting to look at.  
  
For the past few days he had been patronizing this café and every day she was there, sipping a cup of short black and studying some report intently, never so much as giving him a glance. She was young and pretty, firm-nosed and blue-eyed, her auburn hair curling softly around her shoulders. Every day he sat there and everyday he watched her-for hours on end it seemed-, the summer breeze wafting the sweet scent of flowers across the airy mezzanine.  
  
That was the day they first talked, after a waiter had accidentally-or perhaps not, since both of them had been such regular customers the waiters were probably wising up to what was going on- mixed up their orders. It had started first with short conversations, which grew longer and longer till they finally started meeting outside the café.  
  
Those were golden days, drenched in sunlight like golden honey, roaming the vineyards and the fields with the verdant grass full of life and the birds in perpetual song. They shared their dreams, their wishes, and so much more. Learning to live and love in a world that was already finding itself mired in the darkness of hatred.  
  
Through the summer and the fall  
  
We had each other; that was all  
  
Just she and I together  
  
Like it was meant to be  
  
The came the Final Conquest of Earth led by the insatiable Spock himself, and Terra fell, another ball of dirt and dust in the hands of the Empire. Everything they'd dreamt of, planned together, had been ground with the ashes of humanity. He felt her unconsciously drifting away from himself as she fought, struggled to get that future back. But it was not to be. Everything she'd tried had made the situation worse, sucking her deeper into the web of deceit and debauchery until she had lost herself in the inextricable tangle that would be her eventual undoing.  
  
There was no turning back. No matter how much he'd loved her in the past, she was gone now, slipping slowly away with the tides of a silvery-white moon when he wasn't watching closely enough. Whoever she was now was no longer who she was before.  
  
So many things I'd like to say  
  
But he took you, took you in  
  
So many things I'd like to ask  
  
It's no good, 'cos you're not here  
  
Chakotay shut his eyes, trying to wash out the memories swimming in his head. "It wasn't fair," he told her. "They took everything away from me: my home, my freedom, the girl I loved…" His voice hardened, fanned by a fire burning blood-red in a sea of dusky white. "I joined the rebellion. Not because I believed in humanity and that we stood a chance for freedom-although I do, a little- but because I wanted to hurt them. Hurt them back as much as they hurt me." His strong voice trembled a little, as he continued. "Some days at might I even doubted who was right and who was wrong. She was doing the right thing the wrong way and I was doing the wrong thing the right way. I sometimes felt like I couldn't go on."  
  
She held his arm firmly. "Don't despair," she told him. "Things are always better than they seem."   
  
"I used to think that way," he countered, "until I realized that it was far too optimistic a point of view for the reality I lived in."  
  
Janeway gave him a dry glance. "I'm beginning to doubt who has gone through more hardship- you or her. You always keep sounding like the world's about to end."  
  
"It already has," he remarked, leaning back to the bed. He looked at her. "At least I kept my sanity." The he frowned. "Or did I?"  
  
"There you go, doubting yourself again." Janeway sighed, getting off the bed. "Well, let me assure you on this: from my point of view, you are definitely on the home track. So, unless I'm losing my mind as well, we have forty-eight hours-or less, depending- to set things right."   
  
Her commbadge sounded from across the room. "Hang on," she said. "There may be a problem."   
  
She answered the message from a corner of the room while Chakotay stared out at the bleached white stars from her viewport. When she returned, her face was slightly paler than normal.  
  
"Looks like I'm losing my mind after all," she told him. At his puzzled-and slightly dreading- look, she continued, "We have less than ten hours before we get some highly unwelcome visitors."  
  
  
  
  
Chakotay was unable to sleep. He lay quietly beside the Intendant, watching her curled up in her bed, looking uncharacteristically innocent and carefree. Is this what he saw in her? He wondered of his counterpart. He sighed deeply. He'd talk to her later when she woke up.  
  
As if on cue, Intendant opened one eye and stared at him. "How long more are you going to lie there and not do anything? Go to sleep."  
  
"Can't sleep," he replied. "Too much on my mind."  
  
She glanced at him. "If you're worried about your fate, you are always welcome to remain here after we take over you ship," she told him.   
  
He looked up. "That's the part I'm worried about." He turned to face her. "We have to talk."  
  
Janeway grinned coyly. "If this is some ploy to get me to leave your ship alone, not only is it transparent, it is also extremely lousy." She leaned back luxuriously on the bed. "It's not going to work. I sleep with everybody on board, but I listen to none of them," she told him slyly. She laughed again. "You won't get away with this."  
  
"You listen to none of them?" he asked her. "Not even Tuvok?"   
  
"Tuvok?" she rolled her eyes. "Please." More unpleasant giggling. "At best, he's an irritating little voice which keeps saying 'Carry out the will of the Alliance!' in my ear, At worst, he's a downright plague."  
  
Chakotay grunted. "But the two of you seem pretty close," he noted.  
  
Janeway shook her head. "Typical parallel naivete," she snorted. "You will learn in time, my dear, that looks are always deceiving."  
  
He nodded in agreement. "Yes, I suppose they are. It applies to every one in your reality- yourself included."  
  
Her eyes narrowed. "What was that supposed to mean?"  
  
Chakotay took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was dealing with a potentially dangerous person here. "I mean that you are hiding who you really are," he said. She merely sighed acquiescently and waved her hand, as if to say, how you do go on. Nevertheless, he continued, "That's what it is, isn't it? You hide what you really think under a façade of authority and sexuality, but deep down inside you don't like what you see… every time you look in the mirror." He continued, picking up momentum. "That's why you wanted to find us- to see something you desire yourself to be. You want to be us, but you can't and that's why you're trying to take over our ship. But it doesn't work that way. It… doesn't… work."  
  
She glared at him with undisguised maliciousness. "Don't delude yourself."  
  
But he pressed on inexorably. "You don't have to do this. This whole universe is yours for you to explore. If you don't like remaining in your own universe then come over to ours. After all, you've already made it over. What's to stop you? You're captain of this ship. We're halfway across the galaxy from any other human civilization. You could find and start your own colony on any planet and no one would be the wiser. Just think of it," he cajoled her. "Free from the iron grasp of the Alliance. Home free."  
  
She stared at him a moment longer, then she hit him. Hard.  
  
He blinked. "Shut up," she hissed at him. "I'm doing this for the sake of humanity, not to run away from the Alliance. And you're an absolute pagh to think so." She got of the bed and began pacing, agitated.  
  
"But how can you be so sure you're taking the right path?" Chakotay asked her. "You're doing nothing but binding humankind tighter to the shackles of the Alliance."  
  
She spun on him, angry and red-faced. "Do you think I want this?" she spat hatefully. "Don you think I want to be hated… to be despised, not only by the cronies of the Alliance but my own brethren? Don't you think that I want to escape to another reality too? But I don't. I don't because I believe in what I do, and nothing is going to turn me back." She pointed at him as if damning him to hell. "And you, are in no position to put your judgement on this. How long have you been here, three days? How much do you know of the hardships I've endured to come this far?"  
  
"Come so far in acquiring the Alliance's trust, or sabotaging the efforts of your fellow men?" he asked softly.  
  
For a moment, she said nothing, just staring at him in unmitigated anger, trembling, and for that moment Chakotay feared very much for his life. Then a sudden pounding came at the door. "Intendant!" A panicky, quavering voice which he recognized as Annika's.   
  
The Intendant's anger disappeared behind a mask of cold steel. "Come in."  
  
The door burst open and Annika dashed in, frantic, waving a data pad. "This just came in on the sensors!" She strode to the Intendant and threw her arms around her in fear. "We must leave as fast as possible!"   
  
The Intendant took the pad, gently pushed Annika away and stared at the readouts. Her face paled considerably. "It's them..." she whispered, her voice fraught with a dangerous combination of fear and anger.  
  
"It's who?" asked Chakotay, confused.  
  
"The aberration," she spat, tossing the data pad on the floor. "Those who call themselves The Borg."  
  
  
  
  
The conference room was abuzz with activity and discussion. Around Janeway, faces were filled with amazement, disbelief and wonder. They had been conferencing for two hours and hadn't even come close to finalizing on a battle plan yet. So many questions!  
  
"What if we just storm on board their ship, take over by brute force, grab our dilithium –and our first officer-and leave before the Borg come?" asked Paris.  
  
"Wouldn't work," said Chakotay. "Although we have the advantage of numbers, the Warrior is designed so that in event of a siege or a mutiny, the self-destruct can be activated by any one person. We're all likely to get killed."  
  
"That's crazy!" exclaimed Neelix. "Why would they ever want to commit suicide that way?"  
  
"Die in combat and take their opponents along with them," remarked Torres. "How very Klingon."  
  
"The best way is for you to adhere to our original mutiny plan," said the pseudo-Doctor- or actually, still their same old Doctor with a few memories added, according to Chakotay. "With a few considerations thrown in, of course, for the retrieval of the dilithium and Chakotay. But the key frames will still be the same."  
  
"Which are?" asked Neelix.  
  
"The Voyager will serve as a distraction for the Intendant and her crew while the mutineers sabotage the computer- shields, weapons, auto self-destruct, everything. Then some of your crewmembers can beam over to collect the pertinent objects, while the mutineers seize control of the ship. Then we'd all be happy, and leave."  
  
"But what about the Borg?" asked Kim. "They might follow us."  
  
"Ensign Kesin has found the transmitting module which alerted the Borg to our presence," Tuvok informed him archly. "It has been brought on board for further analysis."  
  
"The transmitter receives pulses from the cloaking units on each dilithium granum, and it is triggered off when it no longer detects part of those pulses. That is only the first half of the problem. A Borg Cube's sensors are powerful enough to detect those pulses from larger distances and can thus trace the carrier of the dilithium. To eliminate this threat we must therefore both disable the transmitter as well as all five hundred cloaking devices," Seven commented. "However, the pulse modulators on all the dilithium stacks are interlinked. I believe that by disabling one, we will be disabling all the rest as well."  
  
Janeway nodded. "Do it," she instructed her firmly.  
  
"There is one more thing," said Chakotay. "For this plan to work, we need an operative from this ship aboard the Warrior," he said. "Someone who can help us coordinate the attack."  
  
"Which basically means someone who is on the rebels side, does it not?" asked Tuvok. "The Voyager requires someone who will willingly work with us as well if we are to function within the confines of the plan."  
  
"Yes," replied Janeway. The room fell silent for a while. "Are there any volunteers?"  
  
"Well…" Paris mused thoughtfully, "I guess it would be interesting to see what's on the other side…."  
  
Janeway smiled wryly. "I knew you'd volunteer yourself for this mission, Ensign."  
  
Paris grinned back. "It's the kind of adventure I live for."  
  
Janeway nodded. "Then let me explain the details of our plan to you."  
  
  
  
  
Tom Paris waited slightly nervously in the transporter room in civilian dress, feelingly slightly awkward yet trying to look as smooth as possible. Don't want them to think that I'll mess up the job, he thought. But it was a strange thing to have to play yourself in an entirely different role. Paris hoped to hell that he didn't screw up too badly.  
  
B'Elanna, who had been standing beside him all this while, gave his hand a gentle squeeze. "Be careful and take care of yourself," she told him.   
  
"I will," he replied much more breezily than he felt.  
  
The transporter shimmered, and Paris materialized on the platform. Paris glanced at Paris and found a strange recognition.  
  
"What a strange sensation," said Paris. "It's almost like having an identical twin."  
  
Paris nodded in agreement.   
  
Paris got off the transporter platform and shook hands with everyone. "It's a Terran standard," he gushed. "Nice to meet all of you." He handed the original Tom Paris a data pad. "This is all the technical and tactical information you need. To know, plus the location of your stolen dilithium, schematics and a load of assorted stuff. If Hairs got the modulation right, the Warrior won't feel a thing about it's shields being down, but you'd better be quick. We don't know how long the shields will stay down before some sort of alarm sounds."   
  
Paris got on the platform and nodded. "Fire away." The transporter activated and he dissolved in the blue column. B'Elanna took a deep breath and nodded to Paris. "I guess it's time for a little orientation on this ship. Follow me."  
  
  
  
  
Tom Paris had never been in such a place. For one thing, the Warrior was a fairly large ship, about the size of a Galaxy-class. But more importantly, it seemed to be teeming with people. Everywhere he went, there were people nodding and smiling at him. How was he to know which of them were on his side? He hoped that the pad he had gotten contained that information.  
  
Row after row of blank gray walls. This ship had to be the most boring, unaesthetic one ever built. At least Borg Cubes, ugly brutes that they were, had some form of variation here and there. This ship seemed to be virtually the same everywhere. No wonder his counterpart had provided him with schematics!  
  
He finally got to his room. When he stepped in, he found a pleasant surprise waiting for him in the form of Lenn Torres. "You must be the alternate Tom!" she exclaimed when she saw him. She ran over and gave him a hearty hug. "Welcome onboard." She grinned. "With both our holographic doctors synched together, we're having a direct channel as to what's happening on your ship. Here, I'll help you with the mission plan." She tugged him to the bed. 'Sit down."  
  
Everything seemed to be going to fast for Paris. He sat down and tried to clear his mind while Torres enthusiastically explained the workings of their mutiny plan to him.  
  
There was a lull in the fast and furious flow of words and Paris found himself staring at a disconcerting blur of orange and black. Confused, he blinked and realized Torres was waving her datapad in front of his face. "Hellooo… anybody home?"  
  
Paris laughed. "Sorry. I got too carried away in my own thoughts."  
  
Torres laughed along with him. "I guess I can't blame you. It's not every day where you get to jump realities. But we have to focus. As of now, we only have-" she checked her chrono- "two and a half hours to prep the equipment before the action starts. I've done a lot of it already, but we still need to do a lot of rewiring of the major systems. We need your help."  
  
"I'm not a technical expert."  
  
"I know. I want you to keep Annika at bay while we mess around with the ship's systems. If it was my Tom, I'd never let that happen… but hey, you're not him, are you?" she joked.  
  
He narrowed his eyes playfully. "How can you be so sure?"  
  
Torres smacked him back good-naturedly, laughing. "Don't play a fool," she chided him. "We don't have much time. Besides," she added cheekily, "if you were my Tom, you'd object at once because you'd never survive the whacking you'd get from me after that."  
  
He had to laugh at that. It was nice to see that Parises and Torreses everywhere were still the same.   
  
  



	5. Chapter 5

To Stay Where You Are (Part Five)  
  
A sillier Fanfic written by TaTTooGaL™  
  
  
  
  
She stood in front of the mirror, staring blankly at her reflection. She felt as if her whole life were falling apart. How could this have happened? Merely days ago she'd felt like she had been in control of everything. Nut now she could feel that control slip from her fingers like sand from an hourglass. She'd always prided herself on her control. She controlled everything.  
  
Or did she?  
  
She pushed away the nagging self-doubt angrily and glared defiantly at the mirror. She hadn't let a few sentences from Chakotay trouble her before and she wouldn't now. Or so she thought.  
  
Because, somewhere deep inside her, something she'd hidden for a long, long time, was beginning to surface again. She'd used to ignore Chakotay by telling herself that much as she loved him, he was a revolutionary crackpot and nothing more. But now that a second person- still Chakotay, admittedly, but yet different- had told her the same thing, she found it harder to suppress the thoughts welling up within her.  
  
I am now in a world  
  
Where I have to hide myself  
  
And what I believe in  
  
Not good. With the aberration on its way and her plans still on track, she was going to need every single iota of focus she had. She'd have to leave her doubts and insecurities for later.  
  
The reflection in her mirror seemed to be staring at her wistfully, as if she was wishing for something long forgotten. Her childhood, perhaps. Or things that she used to stand for and were now lost.   
  
Who is that girl I see?  
  
Staring straight back at me  
  
Why is my reflection someone I don't know?  
  
Must I pretend that I'm  
  
Someone else, all the time?  
  
When will my reflection be my own?  
  
Enough of that, she chided herself, snapping out of her childish reverie. What had been done could not be undone. It was a sign of weakness that she doubted herself. How could she still be so foolish? She sighed. She hadn't purged herself of that feeling, emotional self yet. The lost child which nobody wanted, not even herself. She certainly didn't want it: it was a hindrance; weaknesses in her character that would lead to her undoing. To keep at her work she had to remain strong. To remain strong she had to rid herself of the very wanton humanness that she was trying to preserve. Such was the world, full of strange paradoxes and the like.   
  
She squared her shoulders and prepared herself for duty, briefly wondering if she should bring Chakotay out of his cell into her room again. Then she decided against it. Better to play safe, especially during these tumultuous times. The Intendant was about to leave when the ship suddenly rocked like it was being hit. Unreasonable anger and fear leapt into her heart. How could the Borg arrive now when the ship was not prepared? They had barely survived the last skirmish-and the Borg Cube had been damaged.  
  
Well, easiest was to find out was to head to the bridge. She practically dashed out of the room and headed for the bridge at a breakneck speed.  
  
  
  
  
Finally, they were ready. It'd taken them most of the ten hours to prepare for the upcoming mutiny, but they were ready.  
  
Janeway and Tuvok were heading down the corridor towards the bridge. Tuvok had been uncharacteristically silent for the past five hours of frenzied planning, and Janeway could see that something was bothering him. "Is there a problem, Tuvok?" she prodded.  
  
A moment of silence. Finally, Tuvok admitted, "I must express my … reluctance towards the idea of you personally rescuing Commander Chakotay from the other ship."  
  
"You're worried that I may not come back."  
  
"It is an unwise move, considering that our ship may lose both its commanding officers in the process."  
  
Janeway sighed. "I know I'm taking a big risk, Tuvok, but you needn't worry. I have faith in the plan. It's going to work. Besides," she added dryly, "I'm a big girl, and I can take care of myself, Mom."  
  
Tuvok raised one eyebrow. "I was not aware that I had recently adopted you as one of my children," he remarked.  
  
The turbolift arrived on the bridge and Janeway stepped out briskly with Tuvok behind her. "Well, are we ready to roll?" she asked Chakotay, who had been on the bridge for the last couple of hours. He nodded in affirmation,  
  
"Paris says the last of the modifications are almost complete. The alert message is now being passed around the members of the rebels."  
  
Janeway nodded. "Excellent. The time is 0930 hours, T minus zero. Ensign Kim, hail the other ship."  
  
The Voyager sent out a carefully modulated pulse calculated by Seven and Kim to disable the cloaking shield of the other ship. On the viewscreen, the starscape rippled briefly, then pulled back to reveal a sleek, black ship, monstrous and glittering in the starlight. Even from the bridge of the Voyager Janeway could tell that it was armed to the teeth- even with Chakotay's assurances that the Voyager would probably outgun them at this stage. Perhaps it had slipped his mind that the Voyager had similarly been for long periods without restocking at Federation starbases and was not exactly in ship-shape.   
  
"Hailing," said Kim.  
  
The viewscreen dissolved into static for a moment, then coalesced into the image of a utilitarian bridge of sharp gray and gunmetal. Tuvok's face appeared on it, looking infinitely harried and annoyed. "You've gotten us at an inconvenient time, please call back- oh. It's you." His face hardened into planes of black marble as he recognized the occupants of the bridge. "What do you want?" he drawled dangerously, shooting daggers at Chakotay.  
  
"To speak to the Intendant," said Janeway crisply. "Now."  
  
Tuvok glared at her, hard, but she glared back, undaunted. Fury made his face almost unrecognizable. Behind Janeway, Tuvok Original made no response whatsoever to his alternate counterpart. "She's very busy."  
  
Janeway shrugged. "I could always get her attention by firing on your ship."  
  
Tuvok snickered evilly. "Go ahead and try."  
  
Janeway gestured to Tuvok at Tactical. "Do it."  
  
The Voyager let fly a salvo of photon torpedoes one of the Warrior's slim warp nacelles. The torpedoes hit the shields-deliberately weakened by the rebel elements- and detonated, sending a shock wave through the Warrior so intense that Janeway could see it's bridge shaking on the viewscreen.  
  
Intendant Janeway stormed onto the bridge, looking livid. "You told me that there was an hour more to the Borg arrival-" she stopped and stared at the viewscreen. "Double-crossing scum…" she muttered darkly.  
  
"Have we met?" asked Janeway.  
  
The Intendant merely glared at her. "Yes and no." She folded her arms severely and scowled. "Let's get straight to the point. I suppose you want to negotiate the return of your first officer, don't you?"  
  
Janeway nodded. "And the dilithium I found."  
  
The Intendant grinned wickedly, leaning on Tuvok's shoulder. Amazingly he grinned back at her. "Then how's this for a fair deal? Exchange Chakotay and the dilithium for your ship."  
  
"Do you take me for a fool?" asked Janeway dangerously. "Because I'm not."  
  
"Oh, really," replied her counterpart. "Then you must realize that we here do not negotiate." She nodded to someone offscreen. "Fire."  
  
The Voyager shook from the assault of the Warrior's phasers. "Red alert!" shouted Janeway. "All hands to battle stations." She nodded to Tuvok. "Evasive maneuvers. Return fire."  
  
The Voyager took a deep dive downwards whilst firing a salvo of phaser bolts at the ventral surface of the Warrior. Locked in a deadly dance, the two starships pirouetted and bucked as its occupants struggled in a mighty war for dominion.  
  
  
  
  
Tom Paris fumbled in the depths of the Warrior's bowels, trying to remember what Lenn had told him about the decoupling sequence. Unfortunately he kept mixing it up with what BE'lanna had told him about rewiring circuit junctions over the past few days. After the alert light had bleeped red for what seemed the umpteenth time, he felt ready to give up.  
  
The ship had started shaking again. Lenn poked her head into the cramped cavity where he was working to see how he was doing. "They've begun," she told him. "You'd better hurry, he haven't got much time left."  
  
Paris groaned. "I've forgotten how to decouple these safeties," he told her. "Could you show me how to?"  
  
Lenn rolled her eyes. "Here, let me do it. Watch carefully." Her deft fingers worked the safety controls, and within a few seconds, the light turned green. "There. It's done."  
  
"I feel like an idiot," said Paris, grinning.  
  
"That's because you are," she replied, grinning back. "Okay, now go do all the rest- oh damn! Annika's back. Okay, hide, quickly!" Lenn darted off to man her Surveillance station while Paris burrowed deeper into the crevice. Somewhere at the back, he knew, was a conduit which linked the engineering core to the rest of the ship. He wriggled beneath the wires as silently as he could, feeling for the ledge of the conduit. His hand latched onto it, and he excruciatingly pulled himself into it.  
  
As he slid to his next destination, he began running through the battle plan again. Hot-wire everything, fix dilithium and brig force-fields, wait for shields down, grab the payload and be done with it. At least, that was the procedure for him; the Captain and the rebels seemed to have much other agenda on their list. It was risky plan, he knew; they'd had no proper planning, no prior sims, nothing to rely on except their wits and past experiences. I hope that these so-called rebels aren't cheating us, or something, he thought pessimistically as he reached the holding bay where the dilithium was kept.  
  
Pulling himself cautiously of the conduit, he checked to make sure that no-one was in the holding bay. It was empty, as he had expected. Smirking, he popped the panel which contained the wiring for the force-fields and proceeded to disable the field, whistling as he worked. His echoes resonated strangely in the empty hold, and the shaking and distant booming in the distance only served to enforce the impression of loneliness. He shuddered.  
  
The field clicked off, and immediately he heard it- a barely discernible thrumming which set his hairs on end. "Borg clarion call," he muttered, bringing his equipment to bear on the cloaking units on the dilithium containers. He scanned through it once, and frowned. Uh-oh, he thought. Not good. He re-scanned again, and hailed the Voyager through his scrambled opchan. "Bad news, Voyager. The technology protecting these suckers aren't Borg." He frowned. "My best guess is that they belong to the civilization which owned this dilithium and which later got assimilated by the Borg. Question is, how the heck do I disable it?"  
  
  
  
  
On the bridge of the Starship Voyager, Janeway frowned at Paris' report. She did a quick calculation-they had at most ten minutes to the commencement of phase two of the attack plan. Not good. "Leave it," she told him. "Proceed to the next step of the mission. There are still plenty of stores of dilithium on the planet."  
  
"Aye, Captain. Paris out."  
  
The Voyager took another violent slamming, shuddering violently to port. It might have been Janeway's imagination, but she thought the dim alert lights flickered a little.  
  
"Minimal structural damage to starboard nacelle," reported Tuvok tersely. "Shields at sixty-five percent and holding." As he spoke, he fired another round of phasers at the Warrior. "At this rate, Captain," he informed her, "we will not be able to hold out for more than six or seven minutes more."  
  
"That's not nearly enough," she replied, her brow creasing. "We need to find another way to distract them." She turned to address the bridge. "Suggestions at this point would be very welcome."  
  
"How about the Borg?" asked Chakotay. "If we can't disable the transmitters now it means they'll still be coming, won't they?"  
  
Janeway snorted. "They'll be coming either way. It just depends on how fast and how many."  
  
"I was thinking…" Kim piped up from the back. "What if we used the presence of the Borg to our advantage?"  
  
Janeway stared at him incredulously for a moment. "Elaborate."  
  
Kim shrugged. "I mean… look at it this way. We've been in the Delta Quadrant for a long time, and I'm pretty sure we've had more experience in dealing with the Borg than them." The ship shuddered again, interrupting him slightly. "If the Borg do appear on scene here, I'm willing to bet that they're going to get more flustered than we are. We'll be able to adapt to the change in equilibrium faster and gain the upper hand."  
  
"May I also point out that the Borg will be the fastest adapters of the three," noted Tuvok dryly.  
  
"That's crazy," mumbled Chakotay. "They'll just cut and run."  
  
Kim looked a little flushed. "Well, nobody has got any better ideas, do they?"  
  
"He's got a point," said Janeway. "We don't have much time left, and I'd rather take a risk with the Borg than face a certain obliteration." She hit her commbadge. "Janeway to Seven of Nine. I have another task for you…"  
  
  
  
  
Intendant Janeway paced back and forth angrily on the bridge of the Warrior. "Stupid… stupid… stupid…." She muttered angrily to herself.  
  
"Intendant, when is this going to end?" whined Harry from the back of the bridge. "The shields won't hold for much longer!"  
  
"Shut up," she snapped, "Just shut up." She wheeled to face Tuvok. "How much longer are the bloody invasion fools going to take?"  
  
"Not much longer now, they say," replied Tuvok. "They say. For all you know, they could be ganging up with those blundering idiots out there." He gestured to the other ship. "After all, Chuckles was stupid enough to…"   
  
Janeway shot Tuvok a suspicious look. "You don't think-?"  
  
"Intendaaant!" wailed Harry. "They just shot at us again! Do something!!"  
  
"I will kill you if you don't shut up!" she snarled furiously back at him. "I'm trying to do something important and-"  
  
The Warrior suddenly lurched violently to one side, proving his point. Harry set up a loud howling to accentuate it. Snarling in irritation, the Intendant reached for the nearest heavy object –which happened to be the ship's ceremonial bat'leth-and hurled it backwards. The bat'leth buried itself in one of the back panels, raining sparks all over Harry. He slinked under the console and hid. "Useless coward…" muttered the Intendant darkly. "Now where were we?"  
  
Tuvok didn't answer. The violent lurching of the ship seemed to have thrown him against the navigational panel where he lay slumped. That is, until the Intendant noticed that Engineer Kesin at Systems Ops was standing in front of her, phaser leveled at her chest. "This is a stick-up. Don't move."  
  
  
  
  
Kim grinned with triumph as he sped down the corridor unnoticed by anyone. The whining had distracted the Intendant enough to allow him to escape and hopefully give Kesin time to ready his weapon. Reinforcements should be here in a minute… he thought, scanning the corridor. Sure enough, a group of seven rebels came trooping into view, each armed with reassuringly big phaser rifles. "The bridge is open for hostile takeover," he told them. They nodded and went on their way.   
  
Now. The alternate Paris should have deactivated the security locks on the holding cells. It was time to rescue Chakotay.  
  
  
  
  
"We're all set ," Janeway told Chakotay, handing him the compression phaser rifle. On the transporter platform, Seven was doing a last minute check of all her equipment. 'I hope you're familiar with the battle plan."  
  
"All but one aspect," he told her. Janeway gave him a blank stare. "The Borg." He shrugged. "I've absolutely no experience in fighting them. The Intendant does, but apparently it was only once."  
  
Janeway smiled grimly. "Focus on acquiring your ship," she told him, "and leave the Borg to us." She stepped on the transporter platform as Chakotay flipped his commlink open and handed it to her. "Captain Janeway to Lenn. We're ready."  
  
"I got that." Torres' voice filtered over the device. "Give me a sec… I've got a few sticky problems to iron out here." A thudding sound, then a few beeps. "All right. Prepare to initiate beamover…. Energize."  
  
The world around them dissolved in a bluish haze as hell began to unfold before them.  
  
  
  
  
Lenn leaned back to admire her handiwork for a second. Annika lay crumpled in a heap in the corner of engineering. Human weaklings-it'd taken her just one punch to knock the science director out. Though she had to admit that she'd rather enjoyed that. She glanced back down at her work screen. Reports were pouring in from every corner of the ship. People were rising, fighting, rioting, and rebelling, and soon the ship would be theirs. A small smile touched her lips. Then she noticed an urgent message flashing in the corner. It was from Tom, coordinating the attacks on the upper levels with Kim. "A last-minute change in plan…." She read it and took a deep breath. She had absolutely no idea who these Borg critters were, but from what she'd heard, they were pretty terrible people to be around. Having them arrive in the middle of their mutiny was surely not a good thing. She frantically typed a message back to Tom.   
  
A loud crash announced that she had company. She turned to look. A counterstrike team led by Joe Carey had come ramming through the door of the engine core. "Stupid idiots, they're wrecking the place…." Growling, she picked up her bat'leth and set to work.  
  
  
  
  
Intendant Janeway took no time to think. She pointed behind Kesin's shoulder. "Look out!" Distracted for a moment, Kesin glanced behind him, and in that instant Janeway had seized him by the wrists and tossed him neatly over her shoulder. He hit the floor and rolled, then lashed back at Janeway with his legs. She sidestepped his wild swipe and kicked him in the groin. Hard. Kesin winced with a grunt of pain, but amazingly he still managed to stand up and point the phaser at her. Janeway rammed her shoulder into his and they both went down, grappling for the phaser. She nearly had it in her grip-  
  
In a desperate move, Kesin bit her hand hard, breaking the skin.  
  
Janeway let out a surprised yelp of pain and withdrew her hand. Kesin shoved her hard and she rolled off him.  
  
Just then the secondary raiding party stormed onto the bridge, rifles waving. Realizing that she was outgunned and outnumbered, Janeway made a run for it, kicking open an access panel and diving down it. "Don't let her get away!" yelled Kesin, firing his phaser wildly at her retreating back. He lunged into the access port and slid down the Jeffries tube, coming to a halt at an intersection of four tubes.  
  
Nothing. She had gone.   
  
Kesin thumped his fist in frustration on the side of the tunnel. "Rebel crew, be on the alert! We've got a screw loose on the ship."  
  
  
  
  
Atoms Paris sat in the navigational chair of the Starship Voyager, feeling excitement rush through him, as if he was a little boy flying his first spacecraft again. This ship was marvelous! The fine navigational control… the power…  
  
  
And most of all, the way the crew worked together so well.  
  
Tuvok was in the captain's chair, commanding the battle with calm eye and firm voice. One thing he had to get used to. He wished the Tuvok he knew could be more like this: it would make life so much easier. Beside Tuvok was the EMH, wearing a distinct ha-ha-I-get-to-be-in-the-command-seat kind of look on his face. Behind them all Harry was reporting on the ships' status every once in a while.   
  
And he was flying the ship. That was the most important part.  
  
"If the ship's bridge has already been taken over," mused Harry, as the Warrior let fly another salvo of torpedoes, "then how come it keeps firing at us?"  
  
Atoms was about to answer, but the EMH beat him to it. "The firing commands are automatic. However, the rebel elements are now trying to disable the mechanisms. I hope."   
  
Atoms pulled the ship into a series of tight maneuvers, trying to shake off the photon torpedoes on their tail. He dived down, then did an abrupt turn left, feeling his stomach lurch just a little -more from adrenaline than anything else. He then pulled up rapidly, accelerating towards the surface of the asteroid. Mid-climb, he suddenly cut his thrusters and put them on reverse, stalling the ship almost instantaneously- and amazingly, the inertial dampers managed to compensate for it fairly decently. The torpedoes zoomed past them and exploded in a brilliant crimson ball on the asteroid's surface. Had he attempted that maneuver on the Warrior, his guts would be lying somewhere on the deck by now.  
  
He grinned. This was going to be a lot more fun than he thought.  
  
  
  
  
The moment Janeway had fully materialized on the transporter pad, she leapt off it, eager to plunge into the heart of the action. Tom Paris and Hairs Kim were already there-with Chakotay. She smiled at him. "Glad to see you in one piece," she told him. He smiled back at her.  
  
"I want to help them in this," he told her, "so I'm not going back to the ship as yet. Did you bring any spare rifles?"  
  
"I thought as much," she said dryly, tossing him a rifle. "Here, take this."  
  
Paris nodded to Seven. "I'll show you where the dilithium is being kept. Follow me." He strode off into one of the darkened corridors, and Seven followed him.  
  
Hairs handed Janeway and Chakotay- both of them- a large glowstick. "You'll need this," he informed them. He gestured opposite to the direction which Paris had taken. "We'll assist the teams on Deck 12-that's where most of the ship's vital systems are based. It's bound to be fairly heavily guarded."  
  
Nodding grimly, Janeway tightened her grip on her phaser rifle and followed him.  
  
  
  
  
Lenn knocked out the last of the invasion force with a mighty blow from her bat'leth. She stood over the carnage, breathing hard. Well, it had been good exercise, and she was mostly unscathed. Whatever they said, Terrans simply just couldn't stand up to a Klingon. Not even a half-Klingon.  
  
Then she suddenly noticed that one inert form was missing from all the bodies lying on the floor. Science Director Annika Hansen was nowhere to be seen.  
  
She let out a cry of disgust. She'd been to busy fighting off Carey and friends to notice that she's escaped. Muttering obscenities under her breath, Lenn marched over to the work console to message the bad news. Ot was then she realized that she'd missed a message from Paris during the fight. It simply read, Hairs says that there's a screw loose on the ship. What's that supposed to mean?  
  
She let out another loud groan and typed a reply. That means the Intendant's still running loose. More bad news-the other screw's loose too. Dang their bad luck, she thought. Having both the Intendant and Annika still in commission was definitely not good news for their attack plan. "Well, at least Tuvok seems to be taken care of for the time being," she muttered. Ask Hairs what the status of the bolt is, she added.   
  
Sighing, Lenn reached under the console and pulled out a roll of heavy-duty twine from a storage cabinet. "I'm not going to take any chances of you guys breaking loose," she addressed the comatose forms on the floor as she tied them up.  
  
  
  
  
Paris was jogging down the corridor with Seven when he heard a distinct beep from his commlink. "Finally! She's replied to my message." He flipped the commlink open, read the message and frowned. "Bolt? Screw? More funny stuff. I suppose that means Tuvok and Annika…" He shot Seven a look. "If we bump into someone who looks just like you along the way, try not to look too surprised."  
  
Seven merely rolled her eyes.  
  
"Paris to Lenn. Begin recording message: I think the bolt's secured for now. Everything so far is going according to plan. Good luck. End message. Paris out." He winked at Seven. "Here's where things start to get interesting." They turned the corner and entered the holding bay, where the rows of stolen dilithium lay gleaming quietly. Paris nodded. "It's all yours. Now, if you will excuse me, I think Hairs needs some help on Deck 12."  
  
"Good luck," Seven told him as he hurried away. She strode up to the nearest stack of dilithium and deactivated the field, running a quick scan over the external cloaking unit. Species 635, she noted to herself. Tough exoskeleton, sturdy frame, makes extremely hardy drones. She opened up her engineering kit and started to work.  
  
  
  
  



	6. Chapter 6

To Stay Where You Are (Part Six)  
  
A sillier Fanfic written by TaTTooGaL™  
  
  
  
  
And across the voids of space, the Borg Cube, a menacing hulk of snarled metal, speeded up as if answering a silent siren call. Before it, a shimmering vortex of luminescent green and electric blue opened up. It yawned wider, finally swallowing the vast Cube in one gulp. It swirled close, leaving turbulent eddies behind it.  
Inside the energy portal, the Cube raced at breakneck speeds towards its destination. The portal's other end swirled open and deposited the Cube in the middle of a wild fray.  
The Borg had joined the party.  
  
  
Annika ran along the corridor, sniggering. Her head still hurt a little, but it was nothing compared to the triumph of outwitting that stupid Klingon traitor. Did she really think that one punch like that could have knocked her out? What a fool. The Rebels were all so naïve and stupid. How could they ever amount to anything? Annika had always prided herself on her resourcefulness. Lots of people on board the ship thought she was a complete coward-idiots, all of them. She was as fearless as any other rebel: she wasn't afraid of anything in the universe-except maybe the Intendant.  
And the Borg, of course…  
Just thinking of the Borg again made her spine tingle. If anything, they were capable of scaring her. She found them like some freakish nightmare she might have had when she was a child- all gray and black and slimy, ruthlessly conquering and mutilating without emotion, without feeling. Not even greed or maliciousness. That she would have understood-even admired. But not this… this aberration. And their assimilation whereby they recruited new of their kind… she shuddered. And the Terrans thought the Alliance was bad…  
She hated the Borg, plain and clear.  
The deck of the ship shuddered and she stumbled slightly. Drat those inches-thick platform soles. She regained her balance-and the lights went out.  
She blinked, slightly disorientated. Damn those rebels! Did they think they could stop her like this? Didn't they need lights to see as well?  
Apparently, they did. Around her, glowsticks suddenly lit up, and Annika realized that she'd been so preoccupied with her hatred for the Borg that she hadn't noticed the Rebels hiding along the corridor, all dressed in black. She couldn't see them now, but she knew they could see her reflective black leather suit.  
Annika took a deep breath and told herself not to panic. She had a photographic memory and an excellent sense of direction. A little dark wasn't going to hinder her at all. She dived for the floor and rolled towards the direction of where a Jeffries access tube would be. Around her, the rebels yelled, confused as to where she had gone. Eyes shut-it didn't make much difference anyway- she concentrated on her other senses and pushed the access door open.  
Too late the rebels realized what she was doing. One of them made a wild grab for her legs as she slid into the tube, but missed. Grinning wildly, Annika rolled down the tube and landed at an intersection.  
"It must be the stupid dilithium which is causing all this trouble with the Borg," she mused to herself. "It can't be such a wonderful coincidence, can it?" Now, which way should she head? She did a quick mental calculation and decided that it would be left.  
Wait- there was one more thing. Groping, she reached into a recess in the bulkhead and felt for the emergency supply kit. It had a glowstick in it somewhere, she knew. Ah-ha. Here it was. She pulled it out, and fingers funbling in the dark, unhitched the clasp and pulled out the lightstick. She flipped in on, and the eerie blue glow lit up the tubes with a soft undertone. Perfect for the setting. Annika headed for the holding bays.  
  
  
Captain Kathryn Janeway ducked behind a large storage unit to avoid the crimson bolts searing the air above her head. "How many of them are there out there, Chakotay?" she yelled over the din.  
"About ten, I'm not sure," replied the Chakotay closer to her-which would make him her own Chakotay. "Commandant, how long more is this going to take?"  
"Not very long, at this rate," he replied, as another shot burned a large hole in the bulkhead next to him. Chakotay dived out from behind his cover, squeezed a few shots off, then dived back in.  
Hair's comm buzzed-another message. He dropped his rifle and scooted behind the relative safety of the storage unit to read it. "What now?" asked Janeway.  
"Everybody prep your glowsticks!" he yelled to the Rebels. "We are going into the night!"  
Janeway unfastened her glowstick from her belt and snapped it on, then fixed it to her phaser rifle. "Any moment now…" muttered Hairs.  
The lights went out.  
There was a general chorus of confusion from the enemy quarters. With a yell of triumph, Janeway jumped out from behind her cover and fired furiously into their stronghold. There were thuds of bodies hitting the floor. Around her, rebel elements, framed by the surreal blue glow of the sticks, fired, and soon there were no more confused yells.  
"Way to go, Lenn, Tom!" yelled Hairs, pummeling the air in victory. "Alright!"   
"Now," said Janeway, "we disable the main function systems, take control of the conn and wait for things to bide our way."  
Commandant Chakotay shook his head. "We're running on a very thin margin here," he grumbled. "We only have at most a minute between systems shutdown and the establishment of the communication links. I shudder to imagine going up against those Borg things without operational status and no-one to cover for us."  
"I shudder to imagine going up against the Borg, period," muttered Chakotay dryly.  
"Okay," said Hairs, "here's what we do. We'll split into groups of two each, one to take out the functional systems, the other to set up a working comm system. Once we take complete control, we can bring the systems back on-line."  
The floor of the ship started shaking uncontrollably. "It won't be long now…" muttered Janeway. "Better get moving, people."  
"I'll take the main systems," said Hairs. "Commandant, I think it's best you stick with Madame." He winked at Janeway. "Could get lost in the dark, you know."  
The Commandant nodded. "Come this way," he said, gesturing to Janeway. She followed, picking her way unsteadily over the prostrate enemy forms.  
  
  
On the bridge of the Starship Voyager, Atoms let out a loud cheer as the firing from the Warrior came to an abrupt halt. "All right, Hairs, you've done it!" he gloated, hands raised in the air in victory. He turned around and gave Harry a wink. "Not bad."  
"Hmpf." Harry looked slightly nonplussed.   
The silence on the bridge made Atoms slightly nervous. "What's the matter with you guys?" he asked. "I mean, we just finished the battle, right?" He glanced from one nervous face to another. "Maybe we should all go help the Warrior-"  
Harry leaned forward, looking slightly worried. "Didn't you hear about our plan modification?" He asked in a hushed tone. "Any moment now-"  
He was interrupted by a silent scream from the fabric of the space-time continuum. In front of them, a violent green wreath of energy swirled into existence, and tore apart with an imagined popping sound. From within the monstrous energy portal burst forth a gargantuan cube of terrible light and metal. It charged forth with menacing speed and soared, immense, over the two ships. The Borg Cube sailed past, obscuring the viewscreen, and let loose a deadly array of phaser blasts.  
"Oh, dammit!!" He grabbed the controls and swerved wildly downwards even as the ship took a hard hit from the starboard and shook violently. He moved into a dancing pattern, trying to evade the attacker-which was fairly pointless-since the Cube was so huge he had nowhere to run.  
"I believe the battle has only just begun," noted Tuvok dryly.  
  
  
Janeway and Chakotay plunged wildly down the dark corridor. "It's only five hundred meters ahead," said Chakotay. "The entrance should be about right her- argh!"  
His cry of pain was accompanied by a loud thud in front of her. Fearing the worst, Janeway lifted her light to see-  
-and was met with the image of herself, a large ceremonial knife in hand.  
Janeway dived instinctively towards her, reaching out for her throat as the blade descended downwards. The momentum of her impact shoved the Intendant back, causing the knife to embed itself mere centimeters from Chakotay's head. The Intendant rolled, and lunged for Janeway's throat.  
As the two captains wrestled, Janeway caught a glimpse of Chakotay's anxious face. 'Go," she gasped, "complete the task. I'll handle her." Chakotay only had time for a brief nod before the Intendant slammed her head hard on the deck. Brilliant stars exploded in her head, white-hot and burning.  
When she regained her senses again, Chakotay was gone- and her counterpart stood facing her, knife in hand.  
"So.." she drawled, smiling menacingly, "finally we meet." Her grin widened wolfishly, and she leapt forward.  
  
  
Annika Hansen was climbing out of the tubing when it happened. There was this sudden, silent flickering of something somewhere… it was only a slight shudder, perhaps, but Annika felt it in her bones- they'd shut down the functional systems. The fools! She raged.   
Then, underneath the silence, she heard something else. Yes… she could not have possibly imagined it… a silent, deep rumbling that was not only coming from all around her, but from deep within as well. She stifled a cry with her wrist-the only other time she'd felt something like this was when- when-  
The Borg were here. She knew it.  
As if to confirm that fact, the ship suddenly lurched, hard, to port, smashing her hard against the opposite bulkhead. Her cheek smarting painfully, Annika quelled the rising fear in her throat. "The dilithium," she reminded herself. "The dilithium." She continued her climb upwards, trembling from both the ship's vibration and her own trepidation. "It's only a storage facility… no Borg there…" So saying, she flipped the hatch cover open and climbed out.  
Her immediate thought was that it was all horribly wrong, and the Borg had, indeed, invaded the Warrior, for the first thing she saw was the unmistakable blue-gray metal of a Borg implant flashing before her.  
The she glanced at the owner of the implants, and her heart froze.  
It was herself.  
Yet… it couldn't be herself. How could she be... one of them? The terror she'd struggled so hard to suppress came springing back at her, clutching at her throat, clogging her lungs. She couldn't breathe. Her Borg-self reached out, and Annika leapt back, shrieking in fear. "Don't come near me!" she yelled.  
Her Borg-self was reaching for something. A weapon! Years of self-defense training knocked some sense back into her. She grabbed a class-two storage pod and hurled it at herself with the greatest force possible. The object weighed nearly ten kilograms, but her counterpart caught it with ease-and most startlingly, crumpled it a little before dropping it to the floor.  
Annika gave up. "You're not human!" she screamed, as her Borg-self advanced on her. "Get away from me, you aberration!" She threw anything within her reach at her Borg-self, but it was pointless. As an abrupt darkness descended on her, her last thought was, she must have called them here. Am I really allying myself with the abomination in the supposed wonderful parallel universe?  
  
  
Seven of Nine stared down, oddly disconcerted, at her mirror self lying unconscious on the floor. She said I wasn't human, she thought distantly. Then she blinked, bringing her focus back on the moment. She took out the communicator unit the rebels had given her and composed a message to Paris. Then she picked her alternate self up and headed for the bridge.  
  
  
Commandant Chakotay was worried; he'd quickly established a communications link and gone to find the others as fast as he could. There was no sign of either Janeway anywhere. He slunk along the darkened corridors , searching for her, calling her name. Nothing.  
Finally he ran into the other team on Deck 11, aglow with triumph. His mirror counterpart saw him coming and his manic grin faltered. "Where's the captain?"   
Commandant Chakotay looked uneasily back over this shoulder, savoring the darkness. "I don't know." He retold much of the incident as possible, watching his counterpart's expression twist into one of horror. "What if anything happened to her?" he asked accusingly.  
The Commandant was about to reply when a sudden loud booming threw him off his feet. "The Borg attack!" exclaimed Hairs in alarm. "I thought the Voyager would be covering our back…"  
"They are," said Commandant Chakotay through gritted teeth. "That was no phaser blast- it was a suicide thermal detonator."  
Hair's eyes widened with horror. "The Intendant."  
The Commandant nodded grimly. "Which means… that they both could be dead."  
  
  
Janeway dodged to the side just in time as her counterpart charged forward at her, pointed end of knife in hand. Her momentum carried her forward, and she slammed into the bulkhead-with her hand still firmly gripping the knife. The other sharp end sank into her midsection with considerable force.  
With a cry of pain, the Intendant pulled herself free and stared at Janeway with uncontrolled anger, blood running down her uniform. If anything, the combination of her wound and her angry grimace served to make her look like an angry lioness. With abrupt suddeness, she sprang forward, aiming the knife's edge at Janeway's neck. Janeway barely managed to duck in time and she hit the floor, rolling. She felt something swish past her ear, and there was a burning sensation on her left arm as the knife's blade grazed it, drawing blood. The Intendant smashed her boot into the side of her head, and her head rang, still not fully recovered from the earlier impact. Janeway stopped, disoriented and confused. She tried to stand up, but the Intendant kicked her hard in the shoulder, forcing her down. She stood above Janeway, knife raised high.  
Janeway thought of Chakotay, and suddenly felt weary. Had she provided enough distraction for him? Either way, there was not much more she could do now. It was a pity they couldn't get to know each other better. 'Go ahead," she told the Intendant, "kill me." When she didn't make a move, Janeway added. "Do it. I know how much you want it."  
She hesitated, her knife trembling in her hand. The Intendant took a deep breath, and plunged the knife downwards. Janeway shut her eyes, waiting for impending doom-  
Nothing. The blade had stopped centimeters from her throat. The Intendant was staring shakily down at her. "No," she whispered, "I can't do it…"  
Taking advantage of her temporary weakness, Janeway reared her knees up and slammed her feet into the Intendant's injured midsection. She stumbled backwards, and Janeway leapt to her feet. Angry, the Intendant rushed forward-  
And Janeway grabbed the upper half of the insulated handle unexpectedly and shoved backwards, hard as she could-  
The knife stabbed backwards, deeply into the Intendant's chest. Her face a mixture of shock and horror, she collapsed to the ground, still breathing, but barely.  
And something rolled out of her pocket. It was small, spherical and gray, and the moment it touched the cold duranium deck, it started beeping and flashing. A timed detonator! Janeway thought in horror. She had meant to destroy the ship's functional systems to prevent the rebels from getting their hands on it.  
Well, that was not going to happen. Janeway looked into the room where Chakotay had gone into-it was empty. In it were dozens of humming consoles-the communications control room, no doubt. On a side panel, she could make out the faint outlines of what looked like a safety button. She slammed her fist on it and ducked out just as the blast doors began to slide close. She gingerly picked up the detonator, then hurled it as far away from the control room as possible. She was beginning to head for the upper deck when she paused and looked back. The Intendant was still lying on the floor, eyes closed, breathing shallowly.  
A sudden pang of guilt stabbed at Janeway. She could have killed me, but she didn't, she realized. And I did this to her. Janeway blinked and tried to think clearly, but there was no time to think. At any rate, it would be wrong to leave her here like this… Against all better judgement, she went back, extricated the knife from the Intendant's body, wincing at the fresh flow of blood that poured fourth, and hoisted her up under one shoulder. Staggering under her weight, Janeway dragged her along the corridors to Deck 11.  
  
  
Atoms pulled the Voyager into a steep dive, narrowly missing one of two photon torpedoes converging on them. The other hit their shields hard and penetrated. The ship shuddered violently.  
"Shields down to thirty percent," reported Kim from the rear. "We're not going to hold out for very long…"  
"Anyone has any idea at all how to get rid of these critters?" exclaimed Atoms, as he pulled the Voyager into another endless loop. Ensign Kesin, at Tactical, managed to squeeze off a few shots before the ship's trajectory brought the Cube out of range. "I mean, after all the experience you guys have had with these things…"  
Kim took a deep breath. "What we need is a solution that is quick and effective-and only needs to to its job once. Then the Borg will be unable to adapt to it."  
"Like a sudden energy release within their ship!" exclaimed Kesin suddenly. "The dilithium-"  
Before he could complete the sentence, a trill emanated from the conn. "They've got her secured down!" reported Kim. "For most part, at least. The transfer of dilithiun is coming over any moment now, we'll have to drop our shields." As the ship shook violently once more, he added under his breath, "Like it's going to make any difference."  
Tuvok, in the command seat, frowned. "Beaming a dilithium explosive into the ship might be an option, but it will be a tricky one."  
The Doctor nodded in agreement, ever eager to chip in his two cents' worth. "The hardest part is not going to be the construction of the dilithium explosive, but getting the Borg Cube to lower its shields."  
Atoms Paris gave him a wicked smile. "Why, I do believe I have an idea…"  
  
  
Tom Paris' communicator, it seemed, was being indunated by messages. He tried replying to them with one hand while the other held the glowstick aloft as he hurried down another corridor, but he found it an incredibly difficult task. "Okay… Lenn Torres: I got your message. Cargo Bay One, pronto." He turned the corner to what he hoped was Cargo Bay One, and true enough, Seven was already waiting there for him. "I'm sorry I took so long," he said apologetically. "I had to turn back and couldn't remember the way I came… which bascially means I got lost."  
Seven glowered at him, but it seemed that her glower was less forceful than usual. She seemed to be in deep thought. Paris understood at once. "An alternate universe encounter,' he said.  
Seven smirked. "Much more than just a mere… encounter. I had to knock her unconscious."  
Paris chortled. "Well, look at it this way. You don't get to stun yourself everyday."  
Seven glared at his lousy humor, but said nothing.  
Lenn Torres appeared at the scene, looking flushed and harried in the eerie blue glow of the glowstick. "Oh. It's the alternate her." She sounded less than enthused.  
"I take it that the two of us are not exactly on the best of terms," Seven noted dryly. "Some things never change."  
Paris snorted in amusement. 'Well, you'll be happy to know that Seven here just knocked Annika out and dumped her on the bridge."  
Lenn started to laugh, then stopped. "Seven?" She gave Seven a once-over, then frowned. "She is… was once of them?"  
Paris nodded. "For eighteen years," Seven added brusquely.  
Lenn raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips for a moment, assimilating the information, then she handed a stack of transponders to them. "To work. One transponder to each stack of dilithium; then contact the Voyager and you guys are home free." She grinned lopsidedly. "And the ship will be ours. Now, let's look sharp! Chop chop!"  
  
  
Janeway was nearly at the entrance to Deck 11 when the detonator went off. The shock wave hit her hard in the back, and she stumbled, falling over herself and the Intendant. A brief wave of head swept over her, and then it was gone.  
Janeway opened her eyes and sat up. The coast was clear.  
"Why did you do it?"  
Janeway looked down, bemused, at the Intendant. "Try to kill you, or save your life?"  
"Save my life." She struggled to sit up, her eyes flashing. "You didn't have to do it."  
Janeway pushed her back into a supine position. "Lie down." She scrutinized her strangely. "Why did I do it? It would have been wrong to leave you there, that's why."  
"Wrong." The Intendant shut her eyes and snorted. "Who's to tell what's right and what's wrong? What's right to you may be wrong to me."  
Janeway frowned. "You mean you didn't want me to save your life?"  
The Intendant shook her head. 'It's not just that." To Janeway's amazement, she managed to stand up. "There are a lot of things involved… in right and wrong. So many things can't be judged by a simple right and wrong."  
Janeway stood as well. "Like the running of this ship," she prodded.  
The Intendant nodded. "Just best and worst."  
Janeway glanced down at the Intendant. "You're no longer bleeding."  
She smiled almost sadly. "The wonders of genetic engineering. We heal fifty times faster than normal human beings." She bent down, kicked the cover off a side panel and pulled out a large phaser rifle. For a moment, Janeway feared that she was going to be shot, but the Intendant merely tossed her the rifle and pulled out another, which she locked and loaded. "You're a remarkable woman, Captain," she told Janeway. "In so many years, no-one had ever succeeded in changing my mind about anything. You and your crew are the first."  
Janeway smiled slightly. "Maybe it's the shock of seeing yourself in another life, another role… and beginning to consider ways that you might have tried to do the same thing, but did not."  
The Intendant nodded, and gestured to Deck 11. 'The upper levels have yet to be taken."  
Together, rifles at the ready, they descended into the maw of the pit of hell.  
  
  
In Engineering, Lt. Torres fought back a wave of frustration as she misconnected the leads on the dilithium explosives for the umpteenth time. One little mistake, and we're all going to be blown into kingdom come in a blaze of glory, she thought bitterly. "This little plan of yours had better work, Tom…" she furiously snapped the last two wires into place and signaled the bridge. "They're ready."  
"Affirmative," said Kim's voice. "Prepare to beam them over to the following coordinates on my mark."  
As Kim read out the coordinates of the Borg power core to her, Torres felt her heart flutter and her adrenaline levels surge up. This was it, she thought. Double or nothing. Either they'd blow up the Borg Cube and manage to get away with some dilithium at the same time, or they'd all be blown to pieces faster than you could say "oops." Rolling her eyes, Torres muttered, "We're Starfleet… weird, risky and desperate tactics are part of the job."  



	7. Chapter 7

To Stay Where You Are (Part Seven)  
  
A sillier Fanfic written by TaTTooGaL™  
  
  
  
  
The front half of Deck 11 was a riotous cacophony of shouts, screams and phaser fire. Chakotay ducked behind a bulkhead as a angry scarlet bolt of energy whizzed past him, worrying about Kathryn. He didn't know if anyone made it out of the bomb blast alive, it had seemed pretty bad…  
  
A new pair of firers seemed to have joined their group, spitting deadly bolts of coruscate blue energy across the room into the enemy quarters. He heard Commandant Chakotay's yell of triumph; they'd hit someone. More bolts lanced out from nowhere. Keeping low, Chakotay fired into the darkness. His glowstick seemed to be running out of energy- it was growing dimmer by the minute.  
  
Without prior warning, the lights snapped back on.   
  
Everyone in the room cried out and shielded their eyes from the sudden glare. Chakotay knew what had happened- someone had, in a desperate move for distraction, re-activated the lighting system.  
  
And crouched in the middle of the room, each wielding a nasty looking phaser rifle, were both Janeways.  
  
It felt like a great pressure had been lifted off Chakotay's shoulders. His Captain stood up and continued firing at the scattering Alliance loyalists. But the Intendant seemed unsure of firing at her own men now that they could see who was doing the shooting. Chakotay shot her a glance as she looked over her shoulder. Do it, he firmly commaded her. Shoot them.  
  
Then he realized one of the loyalists had his phaser leveled at Commandant Chakotay's chest; the Commandant was too busy firing to notice. He shouted, "Watch out!" but it would be too late-  
  
-but the Intendant was faster. "No!" she exclaimed, and she dove forward, knocking Chakotay down, taking the bolt squarely in her midsection-  
  
And Commandant Chakotay was on his feet, furious, firing wildly back at the loyalists. The man, realizing that he'd hit the wrong person, dropped his rifle in shock.  
  
Chakotay raised his wand and fired wildly at the loyalists, his rapid fire crossing with that of Commandant Chakotay's and the dozen or so other rebels in the room. They kept firing, and firing, until the ship stopped shaking and all the loyalists were dead, but it seemed as if some form of angry energy had taken hold of them, and they fired and ducked and hollered till their throats went hoarse and their energy ran dry. =Read this paragraph carefully. This is the result of writing at 12.30 a.m. after reading too much Harry Potter. Owch.  
  
It almost felt like the momentary insanity of winning a war.  
  
  
  
  
On the bridge of the starship Voyager, Atoms was sweating, although he tried not to show it. Numerous people had attempted this tactic before, but with varying degrees of success. And they had only one chance at it, or the ship would crash and burn. "Helm?" asked Kim.  
  
"Go," he replied.  
  
"Transporters?"  
  
"Go."  
  
"Engineering?"  
  
"We're ready."  
  
"All systems go." Kim nodded at Atoms. "T minus fifteen seconds."  
  
Paris gulped slightly, and set the Voyager rolling forward. It picked up speed, gathered momentum, heading straight for the Borg ship. The Borg cube, for one, did not seem to notice.  
  
"Fourteen…  
  
The Borg ship loomed larger every second, but made no response. The Voyager speeded up, still on collision course. Faster and faster…  
  
"Thirteen… twelve…."  
  
The Voyager continued to pick up speed. And yet faster….  
  
"Eleven… Ten…."  
  
Please work, please work, please work, thought Atoms desperately.   
  
"Seven… six…  
  
Faster…  
  
"Five…"  
  
It worked. The Borg Cube dropped its shields, and what looked like miniature scout fighters emerged from it, swarming towards the Voyager.  
  
"Three… two…"  
  
Nearly there, he thought, hands gripped tensely on the controls. Nearly there….  
  
"One…"  
  
Atoms closed his eyes, let his subconscious take over.  
  
"Mark!"  
  
The starship Voyager veered violently upwards, pulling into a nearly vertical climb. On the ship, everyone lurched violently back as the Voyager zoomed up mere inches from the surface of the Borg Cube. "Dilithium explosives are on board the Borg ship!" exclaimed Torres from the conn.  
  
Atoms banked the ship steeply west, its sheer speed outracing the pursuing scout fighters. Beside them, the Warrior followed suit, her speed and agility no match for the Borg's.  
  
Behind them, they Borg Cube seemed to glow briefly from within, and it expanded slightly before blossoming into a giant orange fireball. Cheers erupted from around Atoms, both on the bridge and over the conn. He turned back and grinned lop-sidedly at Harry. "We did it, kiddo. Now it's time for us to go home."  
  
  
  
  
As the last shots rang hollow in the badly scarred junction on Deck 11, Commandant Chakotay dropped his phaser rifle and picked up Intendant Janeway, lying crumpled on the floor. He cradled her unconscious form in his arms. "Kathryn-?"  
  
Captain Janeway rushed to his side and dropped to her knees. "Doesn't look good," she told him anxiously. "But if she can heal herself- we can get medical help-"  
  
The Intendant opened her eyes and looked up at Chakotay. Her eyes were glazed over and her breath came in shallow, ragged gasps. She smiled up at him. "You did it."  
  
He grabbed her hand. "You made the right choice," he told her urgently. "Don't go. Stay."  
  
She shook her head weakly. "No. This is the way is has got to be- the only way." She glanced at Janeway meaningfully. "The best way."  
  
Janeway shut her eyes and looked away, breathing hard. She knew what she meant.  
  
The Intendant looked back at Chakotay, a small smile playing on her lips. "I dreamt about France last night," she told him softly. "We were back there together, you and i. Like it was meant to be, before everything happened, and…" She fought to take another breath, glancing around her once more, and gripped Chakotay's hand tightly. "Take care of this ship. Use it well to serve your purpose, and you can make the difference." Her eyes seemed to shine brightly even as she faded away. "Make a difference, Chakotay…"  
  
She trembled slightly and exhaled softly, eyes rolling into the back of her head.  
  
She was gone.  
  
Janeway sank onto the floor, suddenly feeling weak and exhausted. Her Chakotay stood in front of here, and she looked up, gazing into his haunted black eyes. Beside her, Commandant Chakotay was trembling, his face buried in the Intendant's hair. Janeway didn't know what to do, or say. She felt lost.  
  
Commandant Chakotay gently laid the Intendant on the floor and gazed at Janeway, his eyes and manner strangely calm. "I found her again, at last," he told her softly, and a small, sad smiled flitted across his features. "Thank you."  
  
Her Chakotay extended his hand, helping her up. It was time to go home.  
  
  
  
  
Atoms Paris surveyed the bridge of the Warrior, bustling with humans, smiling, joking, hard at work, and felt an unquenchable surge of pride swell within him. They'd worked so hard and so long for this, and finally it had happened. The ship was theirs. He grinned and walked over to thump Hairs on the back. "Hey. I heard you did a pretty good job coordinating everything over here."  
  
Hairs flushed exuberantly, his face tinged with pride. Atoms ruffled his hair like a doting father, and he ducked and elbowed him in the ribs. Laughing good-naturedly, Atoms elbowed him back. "Well, congratulations."  
  
Hairs paused and stared at him. "Congratulations to you too," he said. "Congratulations to everyone." He gestured expansively around the bridge. "We got our ship."  
  
Atoms chuckled softly. "No, no, it's not just that." At Hair's slight puzzled glance, he continued, "Well, Commandant Chakotay thought you did such a good job with the rebellion that he was wondering if you'd like to take the place as his second-in-command."  
  
Hairs stared at him in amazement. "No kidding?"  
  
"Nope."  
  
"I'm getting… promoted?"  
  
"Yep." Atoms nodded.  
  
Hairs looked stunned for a moment, then a wide grin spread over his face. "I'll be damned!" He laughed, then slapped Atoms on the back. "No more toilet scrubbing for me, I'd say. Hey… I heard that our chief engineer is having some problems fixing the force fields in our holding cells. Said something about our head navigator botching something up. Wanna go help her?"  
  
Atoms groaned half-playfully. "Sure, blame everything on me." He grabbed Hair's wrists. 'What are we waiting for?" And he pulled him towards the shining halls of the engineering core.  
  
  
  
  
The mess hall of the Starship Voyager was packed today, full of crewmembers excitedly recounting the moments of how they'd narrowly escaped the Borg on their recent encounter. At the central table where the senior crew normally sat, the doctor was now regaling the crew, with great grandeur, on how the battle had been fought on the bridge. He exaggerated every detail, with Neelix at the side, adding juicy bits every now and then. Tuvok sat listening politely with one eyebrow raised, while Harry seemed to have coughing fits in his napkin every now and then.  
  
But one person was conspicuously missing from the table- Janeway, who was sitting quietly in a small private corner, watching her crew with a small twinkle in her eye. Yet the lightness of the mood couldn't erase the dark happenings of the past few days. She shifted her grip on the small parcel she was holding and glanced towards the door. It swept softly open, and Commandant Chakotay was standing there. He saw Janeway sitting in a corner, smiled, and headed over.  
  
Janeway looked appraisingly up at him as he came over and took a seat. "The Warrior is leaving orbit in a few hours, and I thought I'd like to … come and say goodbye."  
  
She nodded. "You look tired."  
  
He smiled wanly. "There's so many things to do." He paused for a moment, and frowned. "Are you sure you don't want any more of that dilithium?"  
  
She shook her head. "You'll need the money, Chakotay. We'll find more dilithium when we run out of it."  
  
Chakotay smiled warmly at her. "You're a good person, Kathryn… you've done so much for me." His voice dropped softer, lower. "For us."  
  
Janeway patted his arm softly. "It was a pity that the Intendant… she didn't see the light earlier." She sighed deeply. "Sometimes, life demands that we make sacrifices, and she made the biggest sacrifice one can ever give." Janeway stared into Chakotay's deep eyes, which held a depth of pain that would always be felt. "Don't think about it so much."  
  
Chakotay nodded slowly, sadly. "It would be the way she wanted to go… to have her remembered on both sides as a heroine, not somebody to be despised." A small flicker of something intangible flitted across his face. "Granted, it wasn't exactly the way she'd planned it to happen, but… I guess it turned out right, after all. She died for our cause, and the Alliance thinks she died fighting for theirs." He stared intently into her eyes. "I'll make sure that everyone remembers which sequence is correct."  
  
"I have something for you," Janeway told him, passing the small parcel over the table. Chakotay opened it. Inside was a small leather-bound digital book with the gold lettering The Siren Songs of Iego, Joeller Kevrin Neaves printed on it. "It's a genuine twenty-third century reprint," she told him. "It's not an easy job to go against the flow of the tide, so I thought I'd leave you something to lighten the burden along the way."  
  
Chakotay flipped through the paper-thin electromag sheaves and paused at a page in the middle. "I know this song," he said softly. "Traditional Irish, early twenty-first century." He set the book on the table and pointed to the heading of the page, which simply said Rain. "We are living on hope, we are living on love, depending on truth, till the day we die," he sang softly. A small smile touched Janeway's lips.  
  
"Neaves rewrote some of the lyrics and rearranged the score to suit the modern times," she told him. "He was a renown Starfleet captain in the mid twenty-second century, and many of his songs revolve around the joys and pains of command. But how mundane they are compared to what you face daily." She closed the book and passed it back to him. "Use it as a beacon of light. Every time things seem to get too hard to handle, take this out and think of the day where your children will have nothing to worry about than these mere troubles. Think of someday."  
  
Chakotay took the book and grasped her hand firmly, a ray of hope shining faintly from his face. "Someday, Kathryn. Someday."  
  
  
  
  
Paris and Torres left the Mess Hall in an unusually good mood, with Paris still recounting to Torres how he'd deactivated this and rewired that, and Torres seemed unwaveringly keen to hear what he had to say. Finally they stopped in front of Paris' quarters. Torres smiled gamely at him. "Well, we've got plenty of work to do tomorrow," she said. "And it never hurts to get too much sleep."  
  
"Yeah, I see what you mean," added Paris, stifling a yawn. He felt unquestionably tired. "Good night, then."  
  
"Good night." She kissed him gently on the cheek and headed off to her quarters. But Paris called her back before she could take five steps. She turned to face him, her tone chiding. "Now what? This had better be good."  
  
Paris grinned crookedly. "Well, you know what we were saying about us living in more turbulent conditions?" When Torres nodded, he continued. "Well, I mean, I've been on the Warrior for the past couple of days, and it seemed to me that no matter where we were, things don't change." He smiled at her. "I thought it would be a nice thing for you to know."  
  
Torres smiled. "Yes." It was such a typical, sweet, Tom-like thing to do, telling her this. "Yes, I suppose it is." She grinned at him. "Get some sleep." Then she headed down the corridor, humming softly and inexplicably to herself.  
  
  
  
  
It was nighttime on the ship's chrono, and Captain Kathryn Janeway was curled up on her couch in her quarters, sipping coffee and trying to read a book. The air felt slightly chilly, and she'd tucked her bare feet under her to keep them from getting frozen. Yet nothing seemed to be able to take away the feeling of being suddenly alone. She read another page, and wondered if she should turn in now and get a good healthy night's sleep.  
  
Her door chime sounded. "Come," she said absently, still nose-deep in Dante's Inferno.  
  
The door slid open, but no-one came into the room. Janeway looked up. Chakotay was standing at the doorway, uncharacteristically hesitant. He noticed her glancing oddly at him, and he stepped into the middle of the room and stood silently and uncomfortably, trying not to look at her. Janeway put the padd down and walked over. "You've got something to tell me?"   
  
Chakotay nodded.  
  
"Well, spit it out. I'm not going to eat you." She folded her arms.  
  
Chakotay glanced up guiltily at her. "I've got something to confess." He shifted slightly uneasily, but when he faced her, she could see a strange sort of courage burning in his eyes. "It happened when I was on the Warrior-"  
  
Janeway suddenly understood. "I know," she told him. "Don't worry, it's alright. It's nothing to worry about."  
  
Chakotay glanced at her. "You know everything?"  
  
"I guessed," she told him. "But it's fine with me. I could hardly blame you for what you did. After all," –she frowned slightly in thought- "we're all one and the same person, aren't we?"  
  
Chakotay didn't answer, but he just kept glancing at her. "When I was on the ship, I couldn't stop worrying. Not about the fate of the rebels or even of this ship, but more about you." He took her hand in his. "I kept thinking, 'What if I never get to return to the Voyager? What if I never see you again?'"  
  
Janeway squeezed his hand gently. "I couldn't stop thinking the same- once I'd found out, that is." She smiled playfully. "I had my share with the guilt trip as well, in case you wanted to know."  
  
Chakotay chuckled a little at that. "I suppose that was alright as well." He took her in his arms. "It's been a long journey," he said softly. "We've come so far together, to a common destiny."  
  
She smiled and leaned on his shoulder, gazing out at the stars. "And we have such a long road ahead of us, to a final destination." Her eyes glowing, she glanced up at him. "It is a road that we will travel together, no matter what it takes."  
  
He smiled back. "I'll be more than happy… to make the voyage with you."  
  
And the universe outside paused its rotation for that perfect moment as it stretched to infinity, carrying across points in time and space. For on both sides of the mirror had they found peace with themselves, and for anyone, it was enough.  
  
  
___________THE END___________  
  
  
Give Me A Reason/Say  
  
The Corrs © 2000  
  
Songs of Polygram International Inc.  
  
Beacon Communications Music Co. BMI  
  
  
Rain  
  
Rearranged by Joeller Kevrin Neaves  
  
Published by Evitcelloc Galactic Co.  
  
© 2273 Evitcelloc Records  
  
Original arrangement published by:  
  
The Corrs © 2000  
  
Songs of Polygram International Inc.  
  
Beacon Communications Music Co. BMI  
  
  
Reflection  
  
(M.Wilder/D.Zippel)  
  
Published by Walt Disney Music Co./Wonderland Music Co. Inc  
  
® 1998 Walt Disney Records  
  
  
When She Loved Me  
  
(Randy Newman, performed by Sarah McLachlan)  
  
Published by Walt Disney Music Co./Pixar  
  
® 1999 Walt Disney Records/Pixar  
  
  
  
  
Note from the author: Okay. Listen. So you read my story and you think it sucks. Well, it has every reason to be so! Come on. What can you expect from something coined up between 11pm-1am daily in the middle of the promotional exam fever while being accompanied by the same bad pop version of the Voyager theme played over and over ad infinitum (repeat forever, says the settings on my midi player..)? Me, a literary genius? Oh please. I probably couldn't come up with a decent paragraph for the back of a cereal box if my life depended on it. (and oh yes, did I mention that I also replayed the May sweeps promo (NO! NEVER USE THAT WORD!! THE PROMOS ARE TABOO! [see above exam comment]) to get my adrenaline going so that I could write all the action bits? Sad, huh.) Anyway, if you have any nitpicks, toothpicks or bones to pick, please hesitate and think twice before mailing me at fortysevenofnine@hotmail.com, because there's a very high possibility that I'll hex you with an Imperius Charm and make you write the sequels for me, or something. Really. ;)  
  
  
A J/C fanfic by TaTTooGaL ™ , presented by fROzen Taya 17 Productions of The Collective  
  
© October 2000  
  
Star Trek and related symbols are copyright of Paramount Pictures Inc.  
  
  



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